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__label__cc	0.529445	0.470555	What Is the Meaning of Low Advertising Elasticity? by Craig Berman Advertising can help your brand stand out on a crowded shelf. Noel Hendrickson/Digital Vision/Getty Images 1 How Do We Measure Advertising Messages? 2 Social Economics & Business Importance of Advertising 3 Is Advertising a Fixed Cost? 4 Debt to Equity Ratio for Advertising Companies Determining the effectiveness of advertising is a core part of any small business’s marketing strategy. That’s often easier said than done, as it’s difficult to tie advertising to sales in a direct line unless everything else remains constant. Advertising elasticity measures this relationship between promotion and sales, with a low number signifying a lack of relationship between advertising and demand. Measuring Demand The level of advertising elasticity is determined by measuring the increase in demand that results from an increase in advertising. One formula for calculating this is: Advertising Elasticity: [Change in Sales/Change in Advertising] × [Price/Advertising]. A company can then run a regression analysis, using a spreadsheet or database, to measure the log of sales against the log of advertising. When the value is close to zero, the elasticity is low, because it indicates that advertising isn't providing a boost in demand. Building the Model Companies can build advertising elasticity models in a number of ways, depending on the level of data they have. An established business can use its old sales records and advertising figures to determine previous advertising elasticity rates and project future efforts accordingly. Newer companies can make their own estimates based on industry standards and local figures. Explaining Low Numbers Most advertising elasticity numbers are positive; if a number is negative, it means the advertising caused demand to decrease. The number reflects both the effectiveness of the advertising campaign and the elasticity of the demand, so a low number could indicate that either area is lacking. If a campaign has a low advertising elasticity, it may be the result of targeting consumers in the wrong medium, such as by TV commercials instead of mobile marketing. It also might mean that consumers are already entrenched enough in their behaviors that they are unwilling to switch. Advertising for a private school might be less effective, for example, in markets where residents are satisfied with their public school options. When Low Is OK Having a low advertising elasticity isn’t necessarily a deal breaker, depending on the product or service being sold. One example from outside the business world is spending on political campaigns. Candidates and interest groups spend a lot of money on TV commercials to woo the small number of voters inclined to shift demand, because those few voters can swing an election. Similarly, a company selling high-end products may find that even a small bump in demand has a big effect on perception and sales. A provider of a product or service with a high switching cost may also find this worthwhile. A small increase in customers for a power company or cable TV provider can lead to regular revenue increases if those customers are inclined to stay loyal after the switch. The Handbook of International Advertising Research: Holly Cheng, editor Darden Business Publishing, University of Virginia: Design of Price and Advertising Elasticity Models Berman, Craig. "What Is the Meaning of Low Advertising Elasticity?" Small Business - Chron.com, http://smallbusiness.chron.com/meaning-low-advertising-elasticity-81763.html. Accessed 16 July 2019. Berman, Craig. (n.d.). What Is the Meaning of Low Advertising Elasticity? Small Business - Chron.com. Retrieved from http://smallbusiness.chron.com/meaning-low-advertising-elasticity-81763.html Berman, Craig. "What Is the Meaning of Low Advertising Elasticity?" accessed July 16, 2019. http://smallbusiness.chron.com/meaning-low-advertising-elasticity-81763.html Benefits of Operating Leverage Calculate TRP How Does Advertising Affect Price Elasticity? Role of Advertising in Business Promotion Advantages & Disadvantages of Yellow Pages Advertising Why Advertisements Are Good What Are Advertising TRPs? Cancel Facebook Ad Campaigns Definition of Advertising Effectiveness Figure the Percentage of Return on Advertising The Average CPM Rates for Mobile Advertising	cc/2019-30/en_middle_0059.json.gz/line1683
__label__cc	0.733153	0.266847	How to Write a Grievance for Discrimination in the Workplace by Jonathan Lister If you believe your termination was in violation of US Labor laws, you can file a claim with the Department of Labor. Hemera Technologies/PhotoObjects.net/Getty Images 1 Win a Workers Comp Case 2 Dispute a Workers' Comp Claim 3 Write Someone Up at Work 4 Employee Harassment Complaints Filing a formal discrimination grievance with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission begins an investigation into your complaint that can last up to 180 days. Presenting clear information regarding the events surrounding the discriminatory action you suffered is integral to securing the best outcome for you as the victim. Failing to do can delay the investigation or cause the federal government to reject your claim. Include Identifying Information Including your identifying information -- your full name, address and telephone number -- in a formal discrimination complaint to the EEOC is a mandatory part of the process. The federal government uses this information only to correctly file your grievance and to contact you regarding the status of the complaint. If you are filing a discrimination grievance as part of a class action, the personal information of all parties filing the complaint is necessary. Your signature and the signatures of other affected parties are also mandatory. Providing false or misleading personal information on an official document is against the law. Describe Discriminatory Events Describe the events you believe to be discriminatory, incorporating dates the names of those involved in these events whenever possible. The more information you provide to investigators, the better chances these professionals have of determining if violations took place and the seriousness of these infractions. Include the culminating events. For example, if an employer terminated your position, describe the manner of the firing and provide the date the termination took place. Avoid coloring your description of events with emotional language. Attempt to describe the situation in as factual a manner as possible to avoid the appearance of bias. Reasons for Discrimination Provide an explanation of what type of discrimination occurred in your formal grievance. Federal employment laws protect certain classes and populations from discrimination. For example, it's illegal for an employer to terminate a worker based on age, religion, ethnicity, gender, disability or country of origin. Detailing why you believe discrimination occurred and the type of discrimination allows federal investigators to home in on this specific aspect of your case. Investigators also can examine your employer's hiring history to determine if a pattern of this specific type of discrimination emerges from the data. Detail Injuries Suffered Discrimination doesn't often result in physical injuries. The EEOC wants to know details of how your employer's discrimination affected your career, job outlook or earning potential. For example, if you suffered a termination, your injuries include the loss of years of anticipated income, health insurance benefits and possibly a retirement plan. This can place your injuries in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission: Filing a Formal Complaint U.S. Department of Labor: Drafting Discrimination Complaint Determinations Jonathan Lister has been a writer and content marketer since 2003. His latest book publication, "Bullet, a Demos City Novel" is forthcoming from J Taylor Publishing in June 2014. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in English from Shippensburg University and a Master of Fine Arts in writing and poetics from Naropa University. Lister, Jonathan. "How to Write a Grievance for Discrimination in the Workplace." Small Business - Chron.com, http://smallbusiness.chron.com/write-grievance-discrimination-workplace-37984.html. Accessed 15 July 2019. Lister, Jonathan. (n.d.). How to Write a Grievance for Discrimination in the Workplace. Small Business - Chron.com. Retrieved from http://smallbusiness.chron.com/write-grievance-discrimination-workplace-37984.html Lister, Jonathan. "How to Write a Grievance for Discrimination in the Workplace" accessed July 15, 2019. http://smallbusiness.chron.com/write-grievance-discrimination-workplace-37984.html Claim Loss of Business Income With Insurance HR Investigation of Employee Behavior Disparate Treatment for a Wrongful Termination Employee Harassment Guidelines How an Employer Prepares for Filing Unemployment Appeals Write an Employee Misconduct Report Laws for Terminating Employees Should a Company Look Into Complaints of Harassment? The Essential Components of an EEO Policy Workplace Abuse & Harassment Policy The Questions an Employer Can Ask Regarding Any Previous Injury	cc/2019-30/en_middle_0059.json.gz/line1684
__label__wiki	0.699549	0.699549	Janko Tipsarevic vs Peter Polansky – 03/04/2019 Preview Challenger Tournaments, Tennis April 2, 2019 by admin Sport Type: Tennis League: Challenger Tournaments Janko Tipsarevic - Peter Polansky We can see Janko as the eventual winner here. Tipsa showed in Miami that he’s ready for a comeback. Though the court in Mexico is quite fast, which favors both players we would give the advantage on the serve to Tipsarevic which should make the difference. So this week we’re moving down to Mexico. Challenger in Monterrey a clash between to ATP tour veterans Serb Janko Tipsarevic and Canadian Peter Polansky. Both talented players will play in a serious confrontation. Review our thoughts on this match here below. Janko Tipsarevic is a very exciting player who’s career been overshadowed by injuries. He played in Miami, where he took a good win against Klahn which is impressive being out of tennis for so long and playing the only couple of challenges in recent years. In the second round he lost against Spaniard Roberto Bautista, but it was a very difficult match for Roberto because Janko showed really great tennis. In his prime, Janko was a force to be reckoned with. One season he was unreal and qualified for Barclays top 8 season-ending tournaments. His best weapon is his backhand and especially backhand down the line is the shot Janko’s mostly remembered for. Tipsa has given his lack of match play and his physical history. Janko has opened his tennis academy not long ago so his main focus might not even be on his tennis career anymore so this won’t help. Peter Polansky Peter Polansky is a 30-year-old Canadian tennis player who struggled to keep up the rankings and most of his career was spent on the challenger tour. Though he has won plenty of these titles, he usually is beaten in the qualifiers or first rounds of ATP circuit tournaments. Last season Peter won his first tournament on home soil which was played on a hardcourt. All in all, it was probably one of the best years in his career and he finished the season with 46 wins against 39 defeats. This season, however, is going from bad to worse as Peter only won 4 matches in 8 tournaments. So Canadian is on a bit of a downer. Polansky’s game style is based on baseline rallies. His favorite surface is hard. He’s got a solid backhand and a decent forehand. Also, his serve is quite reliable. Psychologically he’s hard to crack and it seems that that little lack of quality or talent didn’t let him make the final step to breaking through to the top 100. This is their first meeting. Article Image Taken from www.rogerscup.com/janko-tipsarevic/	cc/2019-30/en_middle_0059.json.gz/line1687
__label__wiki	0.88492	0.88492	Upton Court Harbourmaster Paddy Blues SD Team The Coach House sold to Sean Doyle Sean Doyle group back in expansion mode as it buys the Coach House. The landmark Coach House pub in Gorey town has been sold to the Sean Doyle Group for €795,000, almost twice its asking price. Kilmuckridge businessman Sean Doyle has bought the landmark Coach House Pub, a premises he has run under a management agreement for the past three-and-a-half years. The pub sold for almost twice its asking price at auction last Thursday afternoon. Three adjoining commercial properties also well exceeded their guide prices. Mr Doyle confirmed that the Sean Doyle Group is back in expansion mode after restructuring last November. Among the other licensed premises it owns in Gorey are Oscars, Paddy Blues, and the Mezz Bar. Sean said they’ve built up a nice business in The Coach House, and they hope to expand its food and functions trade. The interest in the auction was described as unprecedented by Jim Kinsella of Sherry FitzGerald O’Leary Kinsella with multiple solid interested parties for all of the properties offered. ‘I would safely say that it’s the strongest price for a pub in a provincial town in recent years,’ he commented. Bidding for The Coach House, which has an apartment above, opened at €400,000 and it was declared on the market at €450,000. Rapid bidding followed before the gavel fell at €795,000. A 13.5 per cent VAT rate will be added to this. The other properties also attracted great interest. No. 47, which is home to Making Music, opened at €120,000 and was sold for €225,000, plus VAT. The building which is home to The Gaslamp Gallery, No. 46, commenced at €120,000 and the successful purchaser heard the hammer fall at €200,000, plus VAT. The Cottage Crafts building, No. 45, opened at €100,000 and the building was sold at €185,000, plus VAT. Jim Kinsella was keen to point out that it is business as usual for the occupiers of all the properties as the tenants are unaffected by the sales. He said that the result was a testament to Gorey town and it shows the confidence that the business community has in the town. ‘There were over eighty people in the auction rooms,’ he said. ‘That shows the depth of interest in good quality commercial property.’ ‘Interested parties came from every county in Leinster although as it turned out all buyers were local to Gorey town,’ he said. ‘There were five different bidders for the pub and 21 different bidders for the three commercial properties.’ If you have any questions or feedback, feel free to contact us. Feeling Stressed? Try the One Joke per Day Therapy High quality construction materials Seán Doyle Group © 2017 Seán Doyle Group was established in 1987 and is headquartered in Kilmuckridge, Co. Wexford. Seán Doyle Group Kilmuckridge Gorey Co. Wexford , Ireland Phone: 053 91 30666 Fax: 053 91 30980 E-Mail: info@sdgroup.ie	cc/2019-30/en_middle_0059.json.gz/line1689
__label__cc	0.508135	0.491865	Elva Hsiao "…the most amazing voice coach in the world." "The magician of voice." Tien Chong "He gives me the confidence to push my limits." Jay Fung "It's been a magnificent experience working with Sean! Simply put, he's a really fun and easy-going dude to work with. He's really helped me improve on my breathing techniques when I sing, which has made it easier for me to reach those higher register notes. This has definitely made the recording process in the studio go that much more smooth! Thanks a bunch bud!!!" Howard McCrary "The best way to describe the voice of Sean Oliver is seamless! You can hear his power and incredible training yet he makes it all sound so effortlessly remarkable. Smooth as silk yet down-home soulful as he wants to be. Sean Oliver sings the way Fred Astaire used to dance. I have great admiration not only for his talent but for the humility of his magnitude."	cc/2019-30/en_middle_0059.json.gz/line1690
__label__cc	0.638235	0.361765	← From Rainforest to Oil Palms and back again: a Daintree Rainforest Rescue in far north Queensland Jindabyne Valve House – Kosciuszko National Park, NSW → Yarrangobilly Native Seed and Straw Farm Posted on 17 August 2013 by emrprojects \| Comments Off on Yarrangobilly Native Seed and Straw Farm Elizabeth MacPhee and Gabriel Wilks Yarrangobilly Caves is a tourist destination within Kosciusko National Park (KNP), New South Wales. The Yarrangobilly Caves Wastewater Treatment Plant (WTP) has been established to treat greywater produced at the tourist centre, to stop nitrogen moving into the limestone karst system of the caves. To optimise benefits from the WTP, the Rehabilitation team undertook the planting of locally native grass species in the discharge area, with a view to producing seed and weed-free mulch for use in the KNP Former Snowy Sites restoration program. Effluent is initially treated using a bacterial blivet and then undergoes an ultra-violet treatment process so that it is within a “greywater” classification. It is then stored in a 200,000 litre tank and released under pressure to a discharge area. Prior to being discharged the effluent is diluted with fresh water to an average ratio of 7:3 (effluent:fresh water) in order to reduce the total nitrogen in the irrigated water to around 10 mg/L, which has been used as a threshold figure for nutrient loading. Once at the right concentration, the effluent is discharged in a large flat sedimentary rock area of about 1 ha in size. The irrigation area in which the plant species are grown is approximately 0.5 ha. Vegetation treatments. From 2006 to 2010, some 20,000 plants of a number of species of the grass genus Poa were planted in the discharge area of the WTP, at 50cm spacings (Fig 1). The four main species were: Poa costiniana; P. fawcettiae, P. sieberiana and P. ensiformis; all native to KNP. Over the last 6 years, more than 300 kilos of highly viable Poa spp. seed has been collected and used in restoration works across the Park. The thatch (seed heads and cut off straw) has also been harvested and used as mulch on some of the sites. Other species needed for rehabilitation in KNP have also been planted in the site over the last two years. Bossiaea foliosa and Lomandra longifolia have been grown for seed production and a variety of difficult to germinate shrubs have been grown to provide cutting material for propagation. Soil sampling and soil treatments. Sampling was conducted prior to and after plant harvest to gauge the soil’s physical and nutrient status. The samples (10cm cores of topsoil and subsoil) were sent to the Environmental and Analytical Laboratories at Charles Sturt University for analysis of Total Phosphorus and Total Nitrogen. (ammonia and nitrates as Nitrogen and phosphorus as Phosphorus (Bray)). As early soil tests showed that pH reduced, Lime was applied to the discharge area in 2010 at 1 – 1.5 tonnes to to raise topsoil pH approximately 1 unit. Seed and mulch production: Within the first 18 month period, nearly 100 kilos of seed was collected. To date over 300 kilos of highly viable Poa spp. seed has been collected and used in rehabilitation across the park, with the 2011/2012 harvest producing approximately 58 kilograms of seed. In the 2012-12 harvest, an estimated 288 kilograms of thatch was removed for use as mulch in restoration areas in the Park. Soil fertility. More nitrogen and phosphorus was discharged during the 2011/2012 season than could be removed by plants season, with the native species having naturally low nutrient removal rates. Annual soil monitoring and peizometer monitoring of the ground water is keeping track of the use and movement of nitrogen in this landscape and to monitor any changes in soil chemistry. Suggestions for improvements: Review irrigation scheduling to ensure the bulk of irrigation is occurring from November to March when nutrient uptake will be at its highest (rather than in the cooler months). De-thatch the grass species at the start of spring to encourage fresh re-growth and therefore improve nutrient uptake over the spring and summer months Test effluent on a regular basis to assess salt load; Further treat effluent to reduce the nitrogen, phosphorous and sodium load; Monitor and adjust pH as required; and Reseed bare patches to maximise nutrient uptake by plants. In 2012 a progressive replacement planting program commenced, where sections of the oldest plants were poisoned and replaced with young plants. This continual renewal replanting will ensure the plantation remains actively growing, taking up maximum levels of nutrient and producing high quality seed and mulch. Acknowledgements. Funding for this project came from The Former Snowy Sites Rehabilitation project with soil and plant nutrient data provided by D.M McMahon (2008, 2012): Environmental Monitoring Use of Effluent for Irrigation, Yarrangobilly Caves, NSW. Environmental Consultants (agronomy) Wagga, Wagga. Yarrangobilly grasses ready for harvesting The plantings are mainly four local species of Poa This entry was posted in alpine, Grassland/grassy understorey, New South Wales, Pollution issues & solutions, reconstruction, Standards. Bookmark the permalink.	cc/2019-30/en_middle_0059.json.gz/line1697
__label__cc	0.68542	0.31458	XMAS Landing pages L'Occitane Commitments - Almond L'Occitane Commitments INTERPRETED BY CASTELBAJAC PARIS! When the planets of L’OCCITANE and CASTELBAJAC Paris collided, there was an explosion… of colour and constellations! This cosmic event inspired a stellar design for the L'OCCITANE gift boxes, conjuring up the commitments behind the products. Delicious Almonds, Delicious Textures... ...AND A STORY ABOUT PROVENCE It was lavender growers on the Valensole plateau who wanted to reintroduce almond trees into Provence. L'OCCITANE decided to work with them… After the harsh winter of 1956, almond trees had been abandoned to make way for more profitable crops. To bring them back to the region, 10,000 almond trees were planted at first. Then another 15,000. Soon, 30,000 will have been replanted. SHOP ALMOND COLLECTION Immortelle Divine Oil ESSENTIAL OIL FOR A BRIGHTER FUTURE Use this Divine Oil on your face and you will not only get firmer skin, you will also help local producers in the preservation and transmission of their traditional know-how. What If You Could Find A Gift That… REFLECTS YOUR VALUES? Use our Gift Finder to find a gift that says something about you. Determined to save the Planet? Our Immortelle range has lots of green credentials! Passionate about Provence? Then look no further than our Almond range. #NotJustAGift KNOW ALL THAT YOU GIVE Through a L'OCCITANE gift, you share all the treasures of Provence: its captivating warmth, its natural richness, its breathtaking beauty. It must be preserved and protected. Values Caught Up In Our Christmas Constellation! MY COMMITTMENTS There's so much more to Shea than butter… Since 1980, L'OCCITANE has worked in partnership with Burkinabé women, creating a sustainable supply chain. Today there are more than 10,000 women working in the shea butter cooperatives. We are dedicated to defending and promoting the unique biodiversity of our lands. The L’OCCITANE Foundation has always been dedicated to saving sight. And it knows that in 75% of cases, blindness is preventable.	cc/2019-30/en_middle_0059.json.gz/line1699
__label__cc	0.642608	0.357392	yqsttuautfbzxefvucdrq In Music Reviews Shawn Mendes performed his fifth Milwaukee show in six years on Tuesday at Fiserv Forum, and it was his biggest one yet. 7 reasons why you shouldn't have missed Shawn Mendes' concert at Fiserv Forum By Dan Garcia More articles by Dan Garcia Published June 26, 2019 at 10:26 a.m. The last time a group from Ontario, Canada came into the Fiserv Forum, things didn't go Milwaukee's way. This time, however, everyone was a winner as Canadian pop star Shawn Mendes brought himself and Alessia Cara to Milwaukee for his headlining tour. No stranger to Milwaukee, the 20-year-old singer has already delivered a number of memorable shows in the city throughout the years. With past shows at Summerfest, The Rave and the Wisconsin State Fair, Mendes' Tuesday night performance was his biggest in the city yet. More than his biceps have grown since Mendes first played in the city six years ago, most especially his talents as a live performer, which was evident last night. Here are our seven reasons why you shouldn't have missed Shawn Mendes' show at Fiserv Forum. 1. He put on a great performance at Summerfest last year Mendes left his Milwaukee fans wanting more after his entertaining Summerfest performance at the American Family Insurance Amphitheater last year. Fortunately fans weren't forced to wait long, as it took less than a year for the "In My Blood" singer to return to Milwaukee, this time for his biggest show in the city to date. Less a day before gates open at Summerfest for 2019, Shawn Mendes took his live show indoors for another night that his local fans won't soon forget. 2. His biceps were on full display It was difficult to sort out what percentage of screams at Fiserv Forum were aimed toward Mendes' catalog of hits and what percentage were aimed at his massive biceps. When he isn't in the studio, he must be in the gym, because Mendes was jacked on Tuesday night. The Toronto native wasn't afraid to show off his arms either, as his Bruce Springsteen-inspired cut-off tee put his left and right arms in the spotlight last night. The music comes first for Mendes, but he's as confident as ever with his image and for good reason. 3. Entertaining melodies Mendes treated fans with a lengthy 24-song setlist on Tuesday – exactly 10 more songs than his Summerfest show a year ago. Of the several performances for the night, Mendes performed two different and creative melodies throughout the show. The first of two melodies came as Mendes mixed the new with the old, splicing his 2015 Camila Cabello collab "I Know What You Did Last Summer" with "Mutual," a song from his newest LP. Despite the years that separate the two songs, they blended together perfectly on stage. Mendes again mixed the new with the old later in his set with a melody of "A Little Too Much" and "Because I Had You." Not only did the melodies squeeze a couple extra tracks into the night, but it changed the format for the evening in a way that caught the audience's full attention. 4. Alessia Cara Alessia Cara rewarded fans for finding their seats on-time by taking charge of the packed arena and setting the mood for the night's headliner with an energetic performance of her own. First known for her breakout single "Here," Cara breathes positivity and a healthy self-image through her music. The 22-year-old performed tracks from her newest album "The Pains of Growing," as well as her other standout songs for the crowd. Her Canadian nationality isn't the only thing Cara shares with Mendes, as the singer also shares his ability to engage a massive audience at such a young age. 5. Mendes performed the majority of his newest album Unlike some, Mendes played much more than just the singles and a couple extras from his newest studio album. Mendes performed the vast majority of his new self-titled LP to the audience's delight. "Shawn Mendes: The Album" was met with critical acclaim and is deserving of its large role in the tour's setlist. Although Mendes' Summerfest performance followed the release of the album by over a month, the project has since grown in popularity, bumping up the significance of his latest visit to Milwaukee. 6. His trip to the B-stage Although his main stage and giant circular video screen supplemented his performances well, Mendes paid a visit to the other end of the arena with a visit to his tour's B-stage midway through the night, topped with a giant flower to give the small stage a little flair. The 20-year-old kicked the visit off with a fun cover of Whitney Houston's "I Wanna Dance With Somebody" before performing "Patience," "When You're Ready" and more. 7. "In My Blood" Last but certainly not least, Mendes ended the night with his self-titled album's single "In My Blood," a track penned after Mendes' battles with anxiety. Despite the serious subject matter surrounding the record, "In My Blood" was a perfect emotional track to end the night during his encore performance. While we don't know if Shawn Mendes will return to the city in 2020, after Tuesday's great performance, his Wisconsin fans certainly hope that he will continue his annual visits. Tags: concerts, shawn mendes, fiserv forum, alessia cara 1111 Vel R. Phillips Ave http://fiservforum.com Farm Aid returns to Wisconsin in September 6 reasons you shouldn't have missed ... Who recorded MKE's first hip-hop song? ... 6 things I learned after my first Dave ... Radio Milwaukee podcast digs down into ... Chill on the Hill announces its 2019 ... Farm Aid returns to Wisconsin in September ... River Rhythms announces its 2019 lineup Greatest Alpine Valley shows of all time Diana Ross delivers a performance worthy ... The top 10 stripper songs Milwaukee: Did you know there's a rock ... 14 defunct 1960s Milwaukee rock clubs Deconstructing a monster hit: Spacehog's ... Your guide to summer shows at Alpine ... Kiefer Sutherland is here for a gig ... 100 Great Milwaukee music makers, part 1 Country Thunder storms into Wisconsin ... Morgan Wallen talks his fast rise to ... 6 great moments from Pentatonix's aca-mazing ... 9 reasons why you shouldn't have missed ... It's Halloween season, so here's a reminder ... Remember when GG Allin crapped on stage? 11 dead and buried Downtown rock clubs 11 places to feed your vinyl addiction ... Ariana Grande ruled the universe Friday ... Fiserv Forum hosts Heart and Joan Jett ... Pop star Billie Eilish to headline Summerfest ... Mary J. Blige and Nas will perform at ... A history of the Rolling Stones' Milwaukee ... 6 Milwaukee record shops I miss Here's the lineup for Gathering on the ... Irish Fest announces its 2019 music ... Hear the compleat works of Mad Man Michaels, ... Here are Summerfest's 2019 BMO Harris ... 10 great records of 2018 "Milwaukee" by Aimee Mann and Ted Leo ... Open jams let musicians stretch out Kid Rock docks in Milwaukee Milwaukee loses a veteran drummer Urban spelunking: The Warner Grand Theatre, ... What song is written in those musical ... Handwritten Doors lyrics set to go up ... Esquires' Alvis Moorer passes away Meet Dan Braun, the Milwaukee man behind ... Tygers' follow-up record was 40 years ... Flashback: Elton John silences the Harley ... Open mic guide Kesha will headline Pantherfest 2019 ...	cc/2019-30/en_middle_0059.json.gz/line1700
__label__cc	0.741847	0.258153	Places to stay in Centre, Nova Scotia We currently have 11 accommodations in and around Centre with other regional listings available for Motor Inns, Bed & Breakfasts, Hotels, Campgrounds and other properties. You can filter listings by the available types: Local restaurants include Bluenose Lodge Casual Dining, Good Luck Restaurant, Fleur de Sel, and Rum Runner Restaurant. Wondering where to stay? Accommodations in the region are primarily limited to Campgrounds and RV parks. If you are travelling in the area, Centre is located close to Flemming Island, Northwest Cove, Long Falls, First Lake and Naas Head. Hungry from travelling? Try checking here for Centre dining. Other local Centre information and places to visit. Longitude: -64°21'22.762 North Shore Canadian Art Located at 8 Linden Avenue. Inuit Soapstone Carvings, Historically important paintings, etchings and woodblocks by listed Canadian artists c.1860-1975. Artchoices At Sue Beaver's Place Located at 251 Lincoln Street. ArtChoices at Sue Beaver’s Place is a small gallery in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia featuring an eclectic mix of emerging and established Nova Scotian artists. There are watercolours, oils, acrylics, baskets, jewellery, and more. Fisheries Museum of the Atlantic Located at 68 Bluenose Drive, P.O. Box 1363. The breath-taking Lunenburg waterfront is the home of the world-class Fisheries Museum of the Atlantic. This Museum commemorates the fishing heritage of the Atlantic Coast of Canada. Housed in brightly painted red buildings, with floating vessels at wharfside, the Museum offers a host of attractions and nautical Gift Shop. Located at 160 Montague. Anderson is a commercial gallery specialised in contemporary photography. The gallery represents a changing group of photographers from Nova Scotia and beyond. The objective of anderson is to celebrate the photographic image and the art of photography in all its forms and appearances. In addition to the photographic exhibits, the gallery space is used for book launches - often in combination with exhibits - readings, lectures and other events with a relation to photography. Centre is close to: Lunenburg - 2km Mader's Cove - 4km Mahone Bay - 5km Centre home	cc/2019-30/en_middle_0059.json.gz/line1703
__label__cc	0.52555	0.47445	Swiss Army EA 51 Merge PDF V1 Features. A recording of the content of a recent Expert4x, No Stop, hedged, Grid Forex trading. Read more, netpicks - Forex Trading Futures, Options….. Mon May 13, 9:44AM CDT. Alan Bush - IF - Wed May 15, 8:44AM CDT. Futures Market, seeking Alpha01:51 9-May-19, colombia Concerned About Falling, coffee. Arabica and price channel trading strategy robusta coffee futures….. That knife cuts both ways. The rest of the market comprises the "buy-side which is divided into three separate categories: Asset Manager/Institutional, these are institutional investors, including pension funds, endowments, insurance companies, mutual funds and those….. Forex trading tax france The intended purpose may or may not be achieved. Retrieved Kylie MacLellan; Ron Askew (10 February 2010). How Does Banque De France Treat Its Investors? Cdif ? Loc-Eguiner-Saint-Th?gonnec 29410 - Centre des. However The intended purpose may or may not be achieved. Retrieved Kylie MacLellan; Ron Askew (10 February 2010). How Does Banque De France Treat Its Investors? Cdif à Loc-Eguiner-Saint-Thégonnec 29410 - Centre des. However, even Basel III did not require detailed enough disclosure of risk to enable a clear differentiation of hedging. 4 9 :105 He proposed the levying of a small transaction tax on dealings on Wall Street, in the United States, where he argued excessive speculation by uninformed financial traders increased volatility (see Keynes financial transaction tax below). Concepts are found in various organizations and regions around the world. A quarter of Europeans are against it, possibly because of the fear that they themselves might be subject to this tax." 170 171 See also edit References edit With the exception, perhaps, of the bank transaction tax which taxes transactions. Forex trader france, vt forex trading This dissuades speculators as many investors invest their money in foreign exchange on a very short-term basis. Can Tax Policy Help to Prevent Financial Crisis? 106 United States : The Center for Economic and Policy Research estimates a US FTT to raise 177 billion per year. They offer to dollarize or euroize, only to find themselves so short of forex trading tax france dollars that they are forced to cut off growth. This "R plus I" (residence plus issuance) solution means the EU-FTT would cover all transactions that involve a single European firm, no matter if these transactions are carried out in the EU or elsewhere in the world. If we hedge 50 of our exposure, instead of 80 or 100, because we feel that the price / rate of the underlying exposure is more likely to move in our favour, does this meet the criteria for speculation?.On. More Forex Brokers by Regulation Authority. 1787 Wall Street Trading and Speculators Act", "Bill Summary and Status. 135 Venezuela: The president of Venezuela, Hugo Chávez supports a FTT in 2001. Wrobel examined the actual international experiences of various countries in implementing financial transaction taxes. 3759) 154 that would require a study to reform the Federal tax code through eliminating federal income tax and replacing it with a transaction fee-based system. In 1936, in the wake of the Great Depression, John Maynard Keynes advocated the wider use of financial transaction taxes. Retrieved b Cliff Kincaid. 1, forex tax france Retrieved 1 maint: Archived copy as title ( link ) a b Schmidt, Rodney (October 2007). 117 At the same time, even in the case of forex trading tax france stock transaction taxes, where some empirical evidence is available, researchers warn that "it is hazardous to generalize limited evidence when debating important policy issues such as the transaction taxes". 191, 193195, 20514 (2010). This pattern could impede the ability of the market to prevent asset bubbles. FTT proposals often emerge in response to specific crisis. Thus, the real issue is how to design a tax that takes account of all the methods and margins of substitution that investors have for changing their patterns of activity to avoid the tax. Windows Mobile is a trademark of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and other countries. Do not qualify as taxable securities. The tax on futures contracts to buy or sell a specified commodity of standardized quality at a certain date in the future, at a market determined price would.02. Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. "The Parameters of a Financial Transaction Tax and the oecd Global Public Good Resource Gap, (en, fr es) - tuac - Trade Union Advisory Committee to the oecd". 109 On December 3, 2009, US Congressman Peter DeFazio stated, "The American taxpayers bailed out Wall Street during a crisis brought on by reckless speculation in the financial markets. Financial transaction tax - Wikipedia 37 Tobin tax proponents reaction to the Swedish experience edit The Swedish experience of a transaction tax was with purchase or sale of equity securities, fixed income securities and derivatives. On a bond with a maturity of five years or more, the tax was.003. 44 Taiwan edit In Taiwan the securities transaction tax (STT) is imposed upon gross sales price of securities transferred and at a rate.3 for share certificates issued by companies and.1 for corporate bonds or any securities. The New York Times. English Summaries of"s in Spiegel Online. Retrieved b "Difference Between Hedging and Speculation (with Comparison Chart) - Key Differences". Richard Nixon announced that forex trading tax france the, united States dollar would no longer be convertible to gold, effectively ending the system. Tobin tax - Wikipedia "G20 Defers Decision on FTT Despite Global Support". Vive la France, et sa fiscalité disons pour le moins créative! Securities issued by companies overseas are not taxed. A b c d e Christian Von Reiermann Michaela Schießl. Tobin suggested his currency transaction tax in 1972 in his Janeway Lectures at Princeton, shortly after the forex trading tax france Bretton Woods system effectively ended. This accounts for.82 over total UK tax revenue.30 of GDP. Background page, United Nations Millennium Development Goals website, retrieved Fidel Castro (September 1, 2001). 12 Briefly, the differences are: 8 hedging protects an existing investment against unforeseen price changes, while speculation takes on additional risk the investor could have avoided hedging is a means to manage or limit price risk, while speculation. We are not in the business of raising taxes, we are in the business of lowering taxes in Canada. Impôts, diesel, timbre, smic, gaz: ce qui a changé le 1er janvier 2016 #France. "G7 warms to idea of bank levy". Most small scale brokers usually set up their brokerage in the most favorable country in Europe that has a lower tax structure, lenient regulatory guidelines, lower operational cost, and a stable economic climate. High interest rates) for developing countries such as Mexico (1994 countries in South East Asia (1997 and Russia (1998). Edit See also: Financial transaction tax and Let Wall Street Pay for the Restoration of Main Street Bill Views of abac (apec Business Advisory Council) expressed in open letter to IMF edit The apec Business Advisory Council, the business representatives'. "Is a Financial Transaction Tax a Good Idea? 1, a transaction tax is not a levy on financial institutions per se; rather, it is charged only on the specific transactions that are designated as taxable. 33 However, it concedes that "The FTT should not be dismissed on grounds of administrative practicality". Forexlive, forex, news, Technical Analysis trading Improve international financial systems and institutions. Archived from the original on Retrieved 20 September 2012. "Imposta sulle transazioni finanziarie - Scheda normativa" (in Italian). 2, furthermore, if an institution carries out only one such transaction, then it will only be taxed for that one transaction. But the Tobin tax was probably his one daft idea". Get Real Time Fares And Schedules To And Fromla Bernerie (Loc) In France. Forex Trading, fX Trading Currency Trading City Index Almost all Banque De France brokers are expected to adhere to the strict guidelines enforced by the Government, and the MiFID derivative also plays a significant role in ensuring that brokers only indulge in honest business practices. "The effectiveness of forex trading tax france KeynesTobin transaction taxes when heterogeneous agents can trade in different markets: A behavioral finance approach". 19 Wrobel's paper highlighted the Swedish experience with financial transaction taxes. Forex impots france; Forex as full time job. 104 Projections of FTT proposals Worldwide : According to the Robin Hood Tax campaign a FTT rate of about.05 on transactions like stocks, bonds, foreign currency and derivatives could raise 250 billion a year globally 105 or 20 billion in the UK alone. The effects of stamp duty on equity transactions and prices in the UK Stock Exchange. Nevertheless, both the acpr and the AMF will act against an organization if they are found to be guilty of violating any rules set forward by the French parliament, which may or may not include broker scams and consumer abuse. Retrieved 10 February 2010. While supervising brokers through a forex trading tax france Government bank allows the French parliament to have more control over the firms, the Banque De France may not be as efficient as independent regulatory authorities in enforcing its regulatory guidelines. By the late 1990s, however, the term. There are four benefits to this. 134 Slovenia: Slovenia supports a FTT. Big banks and financial companies would be required to pay a fee based on their size and their risk of contributing to another crisis." How such fees would be assessed, and whether they amounted to a tax, were. ActivTrades PLC is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority, registration number 434413. 1, forex trading uk tax 44 Colombia edit In 1998 Colombia introduced a financial transaction tax.2, 45 covering all financial transactions including banknotes, promissory notes, processing of payments by way of telegraphic transfer, eftpos, internet banking or other means, bank drafts and bank. Retrieved "36th Parliament, 1st Session". Institute for Policy Studies. All European brokers that are regulated by agencies under the MiFID derivative are free to operate in any country of the EU without seeking any additional licenses or authentications. 14 Feige's Automated Payment Transaction tax (APT tax) proposed taxing the broadest possible tax base at the lowest possible tax rate. "Turner relishes role on City front line". 146 On the House of Commons of Canada passed a resolution directing the government to "enact a tax on financial transactions in concert with the international community". 46 Supporters of the tax are Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia and Spain and likely Estonia. European Central Bank (2004). In that context, James Tobin, influenced by the work of Keynes, suggested his more specific currency transaction tax for stabilizing currencies on a larger global scale. 128 Greece: Greece supports a FTT. For instance, Edwards (1993) concluded that if the transaction tax revenue from taxing the futures markets were to be maximized (see Laffer curve with the tax rate not leading to a prohibitively large increase in the marginal cost. Sdrt is a broadly equivalent tax on the transfers of uncertificated stock. Motives, Revenues, Feasibility and Effects" (PDF). 44 Switzerland edit In Switzerland a transfer tax (Umsatzabgabe) is levied on forex trading tax france the transfer of domestic or foreign securities such as bonds and shares, where one of the parties or intermediaries is a Swiss security broker. "Q A on Tobin tax". "Brazil Tax Alert ". Archived from the original on "Robin Hood and the Great Vampire Squid: Still no G8 climate action". The "tax on stock exchange transactions" is not due upon subscription of new securities (primary market transactions). "Modelling Australian Stock Market Volatility: A Multivariate garch Approach". "George Soros: Open Societies, Sovereignty, and International Terrorism". Some are domestic and meant to be used within one nation; whereas some are multinational. In global international currency trading, however, the situation could, some argue, look quite different. France, regulated, forex, brokers - Should You Trade Shang-Jin Wei Jungshik Kim (March 1999). Todas las personas que desean declarar los impuestos de los ingresos proceden de Forex. There is no global consensus why a tax is needed and what the revenue would be used for, and therefore no understanding how much is needed. A.32 tax (subject to a maximum.000 per transaction) is charged for accumulating shares of investment companies and.27 (subject to a maximum.600 per transaction) for any other securities (such as shares). Soros was not necessarily dismissing the Tobin tax idea. The tax applies to transactions, which are performed in Poland or which grant property rights that are to be exercised in Poland. "If that's the Robin Hood tax, I'm the sheriff of Nottingham". A brief summary of the differences is that: 25 hedging protects an existing investment against unforeseen price changes, while speculation takes on additional risk the investor could have avoided hedging is a means to manage or limit price risk. (Online publisher: Project Gutenberg of Australia eBooks; via m) Baker,., "The Case for a Unilateral Speculation Tax in the United State Briefing Paper, Center for Economic and Policy Research, Washington DC 20036, 2000. Belgium, foreign, exchange, reserves 2019 Data Chart 6 Belgium edit The Belgium securities tax applies to certain transactions concluded or executed in Belgium through a professional intermediary, to the extent that they relate to public funds, irrespective of their (Belgian or foreign) origin. 104, 105 (Chapter 12, Part VI). 58 An examination of the scale forex trading tax france and nature of the various payments and derivatives transactions and the likely elasticity of response led Honohan and Yoder (2010) to conclude that attempts to raise a significant percentage of gross domestic product in revenue. Due to the lack of popularity of the organization, traders can only choose from a handful of Banque De France Forex brokers. Worthington, Andrew Higgs, Helen (2004). Edit Schwabish (2005) examined the potential effects of introducing a stock transaction (or "transfer tax in a single city (New York) on employment not only in the securities industry, but also in the supporting industries. Buiter, Willem (1 September 2009). Org, "Barnier: Europe's 'Robin Hood' tax 'politically and morally right CNN, Brunsden, Jim (1 February 2013). "To Ease the Crisis, Tax Financial Transactions". Omnia bitcointalk Last kiss trading strategy Work from home online food jobs in india Bitcoin verdienen kostenlos Online work for stay at home mothers Bitcoin losing market share Understanding forex quotes Forex master method evolution pdf Top companies using bitcoin Bitcoins minen 2019 Forex com automated trading At home online jobs for moms Work from home jobs for students quora Forex ea forum Vic trade forex factory Comdirect forex spreads Forex bank norge Alpha model trading strategy	cc/2019-30/en_middle_0059.json.gz/line1709
__label__cc	0.609977	0.390023	NS2.3.2.4 YELLOW ELECTRIC SUN Tone: 3 Electric Bonding * Service * Activate Tribe: 20 Sun Enlighten * Life * Universal Fire Affirmation for: Yellow Electric Sun I Activate in order to Enlighten Bonding Life I seal the matrix of universal fire With the Electric tone of Service I am guided by the power of Flowering Reading for: Yellow Electric Sun Famous Groups on Yellow Electric Sun (1) Ten Years After Ten Years After are an English blues-rock band, most popular in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Betw een 1968 and 1973, Ten Years After scored eight Top 40 albums on the UK Albums Chart. Music on Yellow Electric Sun (49) Tommy Dorsey 11/19/1905 Birth US bandleader Ronnie Montrose 11/29/1947 Birth US guitarist Bob Mosley 12/4/1942 Birth bass player and one of the songwriters and vocalist... Billie Joe Armstrong 2/17/1972 Birth US musician (Green Day) Yma Sumac 9/10/1923 Birth Peruvian soprano singer. famous proponents of exoti... Piero Umiliani 7/17/1926 Birth Italian composer of film scores. Coolio 8/1/1963 Birth US rapper Taylor Hawkins 2/17/1972 Birth US musician (Foo Fighters) 'Fast' Eddie Clarke 10/5/1950 Birth English guitarist (Motörhead, Fastway) Gary Glitter 5/8/1944 Birth English singer Brian Chippendale 7/22/1973 Birth US drummer and vocalist Abbe Lane 12/14/1932 Birth US singer and actress Barry Hay 8/16/1948 Birth Indian-born Dutch musician, lead vocalist and frontm... 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Rufus Wainwright 7/22/1973 Birth Canadian singer Daniel Jones 7/22/1973 Birth Australian musician (Savage Garden) Paul Kelly 1/13/1955 Birth Australian singer-songwriter Jim Ellison 4/18/1964 Birth musician Chris Wood 7/12/1983 Death British musician, played with Traffic, , Michael Brecker 1/13/2007 Death US jazz saxophonist Curtis Knight 11/29/1999 Death Billy Higgins 5/3/2001 Death US drummer John Cephas 3/4/2009 Death US Piedmont blues guitarist Joseph Bloch 3/4/2009 Death US concert pianist and professor of piano literature Richard Berry 1/23/1997 Death US composer and musician Wong Jim 11/24/2004 Death Hong Kong songwriter Charles de Bériot 4/8/1870 Death Belgian composer Rust Epique 3/9/2004 Death former Crazy Town guitarist Entertainment on Yellow Electric Sun (66) Harvey Keitel 5/13/1939 Birth US actor Chris Noel 7/2/1941 Birth Californian 1960s actress. William Hartnell 1/8/1908 Birth British actor (The first incarnation of the Doctor i... 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James Dean 9/30/1955 Death US actor (automobile accident) Kirk Alyn 3/14/1999 Death US actor James Booth 8/11/2005 Death English actor Salvatore Samperi 3/4/2009 Death Italian film director Albert Mol 3/9/2004 Death Dutch actor * 5/13/1939 - The first commercial FM radio station in the United States is launched in Bloomfield, Connecticut. The... * 10/30/1925 - John Logie Baird creates Britain's first television transmitter. * 2/17/1972 - Sales of the Volkswagen Beetle model exceed those of Ford Model-T. * 9/30/1955 - Film icon James Dean dies in a road accident at age 24. Politics on Yellow Electric Sun (59) Mohammed bin Salman 8/31/1985 Birth Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia Ron Wyden 5/3/1949 Birth US politician Sargent Shriver 11/9/1915 Birth US politician Stephen Johnson Field 11/4/1816 Birth Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court Thomas McKean 3/19/1734 Birth US lawyer and signer of the Declaration of Independe... Tom Bradley 12/29/1917 Birth US politician William J. 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Writing on Yellow Electric Sun (37) Carter Woodson 12/19/1875 Birth US historian and author, founder of Black History Mo... Edward P. 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Science on Yellow Electric Sun (25) James Prescott Joule 12/24/1818 Birth British physicist Marian Smoluchowski 5/28/1872 Birth Polish physicist MichaÅ‚ Kalecki 6/22/1899 Birth Polish economist August Wilhelm von Hofmann 4/8/1818 Birth German chemist Heino Heinrich Graf von Fle... 5/8/1632 Birth German marshal Rudolf Jakob Camerarius 2/12/1665 Birth German botanist and physician Wilhelm Ritter von Leeb 9/5/1876 Birth German field marshal Peter Doherty 10/15/1940 Birth Australian immunologist, Nobel laureate Philipp Lenard 6/7/1862 Birth Austrian physicist, Nobel laureate Clinton Hart Merriam 3/19/1942 Death US zoologist George Paget Thomson 9/10/1975 Death English physicist, Nobel Prize laureate Andrey Kolmogorov 10/20/1987 Death Russian mathematician Nils Gustaf Dalén 12/9/1937 Death Swedish physicist, Nobel laureate Minoru Honda 8/26/1990 Death Japanese astronomer Giovanni Antonio Scopoli 5/8/1788 Death Italian-born physician and naturalist Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar 8/21/1995 Death Indian-born astrophysicist, Nobel laureate Philippe Pinel 10/25/1826 Death French psychiatrist Christian Leopold von Buch 3/4/1853 Death German geologist Frederic Lewy 10/5/1950 Death German neurologist Dr. Gerald Deskin, Ph.D. 3/9/2004 Death clinical child psychologist * 11/9/1967 - Apollo program: NASA launches the unmanned Apollo 4 test spacecraft atop the first Saturn V rocket fro... * 8/16/1896 - Skookum Jim Mason George Carmack and Dawson Charlie discover gold in a tributary of the Klondike Rive... * 9/30/1903 - The new Gresham's School is officially opened by Field Marshal Sir Evelyn Wood. War on Yellow Electric Sun (22) Ronald Ray Howard 7/22/1973 Birth US murderer Thomas Clingman 7/27/1812 Birth US Confederate general Tsutomu Miyazaki 6/17/2008 Death Japanese serial killer Sir Edward Dunlop 7/2/1993 Death Australian war hero * 6/2/1763 - Pontiac's Rebellion: At what is now Mackinaw City, Michigan Chippewas capture Fort Michilimackinac by... * 12/29/1813 - British soldiers burn Buffalo, New York during the War of 1812. * 1/18/2002 - Sierra Leone Civil War was finally declared over. Show remaining 9 events in War * 12/9/1937 - Second Sino-Japanese War: Battle of Nanjing Japanese troops under the command of Lt. Gen. Asaka Yasu... * 1/23/1997 - Antonis Daglis a 23 year old Greek truck driver is sentenced to thirteen consecutive life sentences, ... * 2/22/1915 - World War I: Germany institutes unrestricted submarine warfare. * 1/23/1945 - World War II: Karl Dönitz launches Operation Hannibal. * 9/15/1762 - Battle of Signal Hill. * 12/4/1942 - Holocaust: In Warsaw Zofia Kossak-Szczucka and Wanda Krahelska-Filipowicz set up the Å»egota organi... * 12/4/1942 - World War II: Carlson's patrol during the Guadalcanal Campaign ends. Sports on Yellow Electric Sun (56) Hulk Hogan 8/11/1953 Birth US professional wrestler Edward Rainsford 12/14/1984 Birth Zimbabwean cricketer Babe Adams 5/18/1882 Birth US baseball player Jerome Carter 10/25/1982 Birth US football player Jimmy Conrad 2/12/1977 Birth US soccer player Mike Hettinga 7/17/1978 Birth US professional wrestler Mike Jorgensen 8/16/1948 Birth US baseball player Mike Sweeney 7/22/1973 Birth US baseball player Rick Mast 3/4/1957 Birth US NASCAR driver Ron Zook 4/28/1954 Birth US Football Coach Sammy Knight 9/10/1975 Birth US football player Ted Horn 2/27/1910 Birth US race car driver Tom Goodwin 7/27/1968 Birth US baseball player Allan McNish 12/29/1969 Birth Scottish race car driver Bill Beaumont 3/9/1952 Birth English rugby player Ricky Otto 11/9/1967 Birth English footballer Ryan Lamb 5/18/1986 Birth English rugby union player Tommy Bishop 10/15/1940 Birth English rugby league player William Renshaw 1/3/1861 Birth British champion tennis player Alexei Nemov 5/28/1976 Birth Russian gymnast Luís Figo 11/4/1972 Birth Portuguese footballer Megumi Kawamura 7/12/1983 Birth Japanese volleyballer Munaf Patel 7/12/1983 Birth Indian cricketer Chris Brunt 12/14/1984 Birth Northern Irish footballer Igor Belanov 9/25/1960 Birth Ukrainian footballer Édouard Carpentier 7/17/1926 Birth French-born professional wrestler Franco Costanzo 9/5/1980 Birth Argentinian football goalkeeper Philippe Candeloro 2/17/1972 Birth French figure skater Gerard Piqué 2/2/1987 Birth Spanish football player Eefke Mulder 10/30/1977 Birth Dutch hockey-international Hildrun Claus 5/13/1939 Birth German athlete Norbert Haug 11/24/1952 Birth German motorsport executive (Mercedes Benz) Marcelo Salas 12/24/1974 Birth Chilean footballer Jo Siffert 7/7/1936 Birth Swiss race car driver Gilles Villeneuve 1/18/1950 Birth Canadian race car driver Stephane Richer 6/7/1966 Birth Canadian hockey player Ricardo Arona 7/17/1978 Birth Brazilian mixed martial artist Ricardo Rosset 7/27/1968 Birth Brazilian Formula One driver Andrew Foster 8/31/1985 Birth Australian rules footballer Glenn Morrison 5/28/1976 Birth Rugby League Player Babe Ruth 8/16/1948 Death US baseball player Bob Sweikert 6/17/1956 Death US racing driver Danny Oakes 1/13/2007 Death US racecar driver Gene Green 5/23/1981 Death US baseball player George McAfee 3/4/2009 Death former US football player Lip Pike 10/10/1893 Death US baseball player Beryl Burton 5/8/1996 Death English cyclist Harry Parkes 3/4/2009 Death English footballer Tazio Nuvolari 8/11/1953 Death Italian race car driver Dominguín 5/8/1996 Death Spanish bullfighter Chuck Rayner 10/5/2002 Death Canadian ice hockey player Yvon Cormier 3/4/2009 Death Canadian professional wrestler Castilho 2/2/1987 Death Brazilian footballer Babe Adams 7/27/1968 Death baseball player * 8/6/1958 - Australian runner Herb Elliot breaks the world record for the mile at the Morton Stadium in Dublin wi... Education on Yellow Electric Sun (3) Nature on Yellow Electric Sun (0) Business on Yellow Electric Sun (13) Clarence "Kelly" Jo... 2/27/1910 Birth US aircraft engineer (Lockheed Skunk Works Jonathan Hoenig 9/10/1975 Birth US investment advisor Robert O. Anderson 4/13/1917 Birth US businessman Charles Collett 9/10/1871 Birth British mechanical engineer Carlos Slim Helú 1/28/1940 Birth Mexican businessman Jacques-Germain Soufflot 7/22/1713 Birth French architect John A. Roebling 7/22/1869 Death German-US civil engineer (Brooklyn Bridge), John Nash 5/13/1835 Death English architect Accidents on Yellow Electric Sun (3) * 10/10/1997 - An Austral Airlines DC-9-32 crashes and explodes near Nuevo Berlin, Uruguay killing 74. Other on Yellow Electric Sun (36) Howard Aiken 3/9/1900 Birth US computing pioneer Elias Ashmole 5/23/1617 Birth English antiquarian Holger Hott Johansen 4/8/1974 Birth Norwegian orienteerist Emiliano Mercado del Toro 8/21/1891 Birth World's oldest living man 2004-2007 Haller Nutt 2/17/1816 Birth Southern Plantation owner Alfred Packer 4/23/1907 Death US Cannibal Emily Post 9/25/1960 Death US etiquette expert Garth Williams 5/8/1996 Death US illustrator Luigi Schiavonetti 6/7/1810 Death Italian engraver John Sutton, 1st Baron Dudley 9/30/1487 Death Lord Lieutenant of Ireland Léon Jouhaux 4/28/1954 Death French labor leader, recipient of the Nobel Peace Pr... Paul Rostock 6/17/1956 Death German doctor Frank Macfarlane Burnet 8/31/1985 Death Australian biologist, Nobel laureate John, Elector of Saxony 8/16/1532 Death Mehmed II 5/3/1481 Death Ottoman Sultan * 1/23/1997 - Madeleine Albright becomes the first woman to serve as United States Secretary of State. * 4/18/1912 - The Cunard liner RMS Carpathia brings 705 survivors from the RMS Titanic to New York City. * 5/3/2001 - The United States loses its seat on the U.N. Human Rights Commission for the first time since the comm... * 6/7/1862 - The United States and Britain agree to suppress the slave trade. * 6/17/2008 - First day of legal same-sex marriage in California * 11/14/1910 - Aviator Eugene Ely performs the first take off from a ship in Hampton Roads, Virginia. He took off fro... * 12/4/1110 - First Crusade: The Crusaders conquer Sidon. * 6/27/1998 - Opening of the Kuala Lumpur International Airport in Malaysia. * 5/8/1788 - French Parlement is suspended to be replaced by the creation of forty-seven new courts. * 9/5/1980 - The St. Gotthard Tunnel opens in Switzerland as the world's longest highway tunnel at 10.14 miles (16.... * 12/24/1974 - Cyclone Tracy devastates Darwin, Australia. * 2/2/1935 - Leonarde Keeler tests the first polygraph machine. * 3/4/1957 - The S&P 500 stock market index is introduced, replacing the S&P 90. * 3/9/1276 - Augsburg becomes an Imperial Free City. * 3/9/1796 - Napoléon Bonaparte marries his first wife, Joséphine de Beauharnais. * 4/8/1974 - Hank Aaron hits his 715th career home run surpassing Babe Ruth's 39-year-old record. * 4/13/1969 - Closure of the Brisbane tramway network. * 4/28/1902 - Using the ISO 8601 standard Year Zero definition for the Gregorian calendar preceded by the Julian cal... * 9/25/1804 - The Teton Sioux (a subdivision of the Lakota) demand one of the boats from the Lewis and Clark Expedit... * 10/20/1935 - The Long March ends * 10/15/1888 - The "From Hell" letter sent by Jack the Ripper is received by the investigators. Playlist for Yellow Electric Sun Reading for Yellow Electric Sun YellowElectric Sun Yellow Sun is your Conscious Self - who you are and who you are becoming."I Am that I Am...I Am that I Am...I Am that I Am." This mantra of Yellow Sun is a meditation for accessing the I Am presence that contains great power and universal truth. Yellow Sun is the mystery unveiled, the simplicity of unconditional love and limitless bliss. Known by many names, Yellow Sun is the Solar Lord, the Mind of Light, the Center that is also your center. Yellow Sun is your solar home, the Great Central Sun. Yellow Sun is a reminder that you are, at every moment, in the center of All That Is. In your journey of remembrance, you are crafting a light body to return to a home in the stars that you never really left. Return as a child of the sacred to the Great Central Sun! You are the crown of creation, infused with the blueprint of solar mind. You are a Godseed, the reflection of cosmic consciousness. You are love made visible! Discover the simple secret encoded in Yellow Sun's star-glyph: you are unconditional love, the stone of indestructible liberation. Radiate that knowing in all your thoughts and actions. Love all of creation. Join the dance of light, the fundamental constant of nature, and shine forth the clarity of your true essence. There is great power in simply identifying with the light:"As above, so below." You are in God, and God is in you. As you express unconditional love, you become more than you previously perceived yourself to be. You become illumined, the full manifestation of your divinity. In the embrace of your humanity, accept yourself and others unconditionally. Magnify your full presence. Yellow Sun will come in myriad forms to assist you. Be limitless. Accept and understand the nature of judgement, fear, light and dark within yourself and others. Love and accept yourself and others as you are, freed from previous boundaries. You are the dawning of the solar age.As you move toward your core of light, you will find a clear-light awareness that is innately innocent. In this place, the mind is restored to it's original state of receptivity. Clarity and freedom become expressions of being, and bliss becomes the body. At this core of light, a new reality is born. From the union of the divine masculine and feminine is birthed the solar androgyny of cosmic consciousness. Now we find ourselves in a great awakening. We have the opportunity to retrace our steps, to return to union with Original Cause. We who have deepened the illusion of seperation are now poised to retrieve what seemed to be lost forever. Through the gift of rebirth and ascension, we are reclaiming our original state of union with God. We are going home.The process of rebirth and ascension can be viewed simply as the raising of the vibratory rate of the Earth and her children. It is embodied in the state of consciousness that knows the self as divine. The circlet, or crown, is a symbol of recognizing and knowing that divine self. So the crown as a sacred tool is a universal symbol of the completion of a circle of self-empowerment and self-authority. Full ascension is the freedom to take your physical form with you to other planes and dimensions. In preparation for the ascension, there is an opening and clearing of your light seals and chakras. If you choose to walk this path, know that in the embodiment of your "I Am" self, you will learn to accept all things unconditionally, forgiving and releasing all judgements of yourself and others. The activation of solar mind and ascension is already in progress. In divine fusion, you are becoming the one body of the ascension.Open your heart as a flower to the Sun, and become the same love that holds universes together! Yellow Seed is your Higher Self & Guide. Yellow Seed is the ordered pattern of growth. You and your life are the fertile soil, and the mystery blooms within you through the power of your intention or seed thoughts. Just as a seed contains the hologram of its completion, the process of manifestation follows a natural order. In this gestation process, your intention is quickened by Spirit. The charged seed, your true desire or vision, becomes the focus for germination.What can you open that will support receptivity and assist the germination of your seed intentions? Envision the seed receiving the invitation to grow in the openness of your world. Viscerally feel the possibility of your heart's dream emerging. Your true desires and dreams contain an innate intelligence that can break through even the rigidity of fixed expectations. Planting a new seed, even in the hard soil of old belief systems, can bring unexpected magic and growth.Be willing to break open the constraining shells of past patterns, the shackles of belief structures. Call forth your creative involvement with life. This involvement frees and awakens the powerful energy of the life force, shifting your perceptions and experience, catalyzing the manifestation of your dreams. Participate spontaneously in your growth, unrestricted by the illusion of old structures that once provided safety. Move forward into the light of new possibilities.Tropism is the tendency to respond or move toward something by natural attraction. Through a code inherent within, a sprouted seed grows toward the light and a sunflower follows the Sun. In like manner, you respond to the light of your Essence Self, opening naturally to the fulfillment of your true nature. Through your own process of living and learning, you generate and plant various intentions and desires. As your natural growth pattern is catalyzed and awakened, your truth germinates in wisdom, emerging into the light in which all seeds flourish. Thus, as you plant your own truth, more truth comes to light. In this way, you create ever more fertile ground in which to explore and express all that you are. Red Dragon is your Subconscious Self and Hidden Helper. Red Dragon represents the root source of life, the nurturance and support of primary being, and within it are found the primal waters of unity. This is where your deepest roots receive true nourishment. Red Dragon is the energy of form contained within the formlessness of the primordial sea.Primal trust means making choices with no guarantees, knowing that divine nurturance will provide what is needed for your journey. It means making choices moment by moment, implicitly trusting your innate steering mechanism of heart-knowing. Primal trust implies surrendering to the will of the divine self, letting go of what your ego deems to be control of the outcomes in your life. It means deeply trusting the processes that are at work within your present spiral of evolution. The energy of Red Dragon asks you to embrace the depth of your receptivity. Perhaps you have been taught that it is better to give than to receive. Giving is a powerful way to learn how to receive, but it is not the whole picture. There is a circuit of completion in giving and receiving that happens within you and in your external world at the same time. If you trust unconditionally in the giving, you are not attached to how the gift is received. When you freely give, you fill your cup with sweet waters, which you can then offern innocently and purely to another. Know, on one level, that your gift is poured out universally regardless of how it appears to be received. However, when the gift comes from the ego, it is limited by expectations and conditions. Love just is. It is neither given nor taken; rather it is simply discovered and allowed. The universe is an inseparable whole. Red Dragon represents the energy matrix lines that look like a web in the universe, through which all points are connected in time and space. This energetic web of communication is known as the 'crystal grid network.' It is a cauldron of creation, a potent field in which all things are not only possible but constantly being created. Within this grid, the linear causality of time and space has been freed into an open system in which all time and all space exist and interact simultaneously. This grid connects the larger holograms of reality with our own. Its energy lines connect all places, times and events - even those that are seemingly unrelated. All phenomena and all actions are part of this larger whole; it is the very foundation for telepathy and synchronicity. Red Dragon embodies unity, in which all things are one with the Source. White Dog represents your Challenge and Gift. With maturity and awareness this challenge will turn into a Focus. This is what you desire to learn in this lifetime.Do you feel caught up in the emotional drama of life? White Dog asks you to take an honest look at repetitive or obsessive roles. The charged emotions in these roles are often associated with anger, fear, or jealousy. White Dog offers you a different experience of yourself - that of the objective 'witness' who can choose, rather than being drawn into charged emotional reactions. You can feel the liberation of observing your life from varied positions. At the same time, befriend the emotional, reactive part of yourself by examining its underlying issues and their emotional source. All emotions hold the positive intent of assisting you in seeing the truth, receiving the teaching, and healing the root cause. Strong 'negative' emotions often come from hidden wounds and unresolved life experiences. Deep emotions may arise from a sense of separation and a desire for unity that may be misunderstood by the emotional body. Are you easily "unhinged" by feelings of possessiveness or jealousy? If so, learn how to take the position of "the other". Step inside the other's skin and see how it looks from his or her perspective. Then feel the release that comes from stepping out of your position and understanding from another's perspective. Remember, you are always at choice. If you hold memories or wounds relating to unfinsihed emotional issues, you are being asked to interact with individuals, situations, or memories that still hold their charge. These issues are requesting healing and release. There is no blame, and there are no victims. Now is the time to clear these issues, to make way for new and liberating perceptions. As you express who you truly are, your companions of destiny acknowledge your true essence, building the trust and connection that reveals your destiny. The Harmonic Wisdom of White Dog is affinity, the attraction of like vibrations or substances for one another. Such companions are drawn together by the same aligned force that draws iron filings to a magnet. Companions of destiny are drawn together to do work that is naturally harmonious. Blue Storm is your Compliment - something that comes naturally to you.Blue Storm is the initiation by fire, the lightning path, the arrival of the thunderbeings who bring the final transformation. To the Maya, Blue Storm represents the storm, the thundercloud full of purifying rain, and the lightning that shatters any false structuring of reality. Blue Storm is the purification of the 'body temple' and the ignition of the light body. In these last years of a twenty-six-thousand-year Mayan grand cycle, Blue Storm comes to help you in the disintegration process that moves you from separation to ascension. This initiation by fire breaks any false containers of self that cannot withstand the flame of transmutation. Only your true identity will live through these fires, for you will be reborn in the heart of All That Is. Blue Storm provides the water that purifies and quenches your spiritual thirst. In this state of consciousness, you stand willing to surrender everything. You give up what you seem to be in order to become fully what you are. You step into the fires of the unknown, and you are changed forever. Allow Blue Storm's storm to purify and cleanse you. Blue Storm catalyzes and prepares your nervous system and circuitry for complete transformation. It is the electromagnetic storm of transmutation, the clearing and quickening of your physical, mental, emotional, and etheric bodies. As you become aligned with the descending energies, and evolve in consciousness, you body's vibration is raised, becoming less 'dense'. Your new alignment ignites the quickening process that transmutes the shadows of the past, including experiences, judgements, thoughtforms, and old patterns that have held you back. As you move into this new vibration, you may feel off balance. In this transformational shift, you will feel unusual quickenings on every level of your being. You will sense emotional and physical 'imbalances' and restructuring. Your issues will be catalyzed and brought out for you to address. By being present with your old patterns you have a unique opportunity to access the energy of Blue Storm, which is experienced as an inner transformational 'storm', a natural part of the process of vibrational shift and quickening. Whether you are experiencing these changes consciously or unconsicously, the vibrational change is adjusting your energy pattern to accomodate the flow of the language of light. These new frequencies feed you on every level of your being. As your transformation progresses, you quickly become aware of the unconscious material you still need to process. No longer can you escape the effects of your belief systems. Fears and negative images can all be felt very quickly. The transformation is experienced as if it were happening 'from the inside out'. Things seem to 'cook' inside you. Remember that you have chosen to take part in this rebirth, both on a planetary and a personal level - the planetary dream, the miracle on Earth, is what brought you here! You are becoming the living model of the new reality. As an emissary of the great change, you are a transformer of the collective myth. Riding the crest of the wave, you are travelling both outward and inward on your journey home - for yourself and for all those who will follow after you. A simple catalyst for this catapulting force is the integration of duality within. The personal integration of shadow is what will create the miracle! Personal shadow is simply that which is separated from the full light of consciousness. By integrating shadow, you are freed from delusions of right or wrong, good and evil. Shadow provides an opportunity for you to bring in all of your expanded essence. Consciousness is a structural metaphor that is calling for transformation. As your consciousness becomes crystallized, narrow, and complex, it invites the process of dissipaton to 'unravel' and break it free. As you travel the spiral vortex of light, expanding into ever-widening realms of truth, your crystallized energy breaks down and trasncends form. This process can be very intense, but if you embrace it, you can be transformed into a freed adventurer - a divine actor who can play any part without becoming attached to it. Your Tone is Tone 3 - ElectricMovement, change, flow, current, creativity, integration, sacred trinity. Three is the ray of Rhythm, the galactic heartbeat of natural flow. This universal river offers you movement, and all possibilities flow within its pulse. Open yourself to its current of change! The Electric Tone of 3 suggests that there is something you desire to change or integrate into the natural flow of your life. Become the 'third point of light,' created from the integration of polarity. Feel the pulse of the sacred trinity within you, revealing a new creation. Allow it to integrate that which has seemingly been lost, separated, or obscured from your sight. If you have a tendency to be scattered in your creativity, make an extra effort to focus your energy. Align with your intention to express the truth. Now is the time for the Great Mystery to reveal itself through you. Know yourself as the capstone of light. Allow your creativity to express your spiritual journey. Yellow Electric Sun is in the Mirror wavespell jennifer kelting Arden NC USA Franspace Rotterdam 11 Netherlands ahau3 Wallsend 02 Australia williamhills Palm Coast FL USA fearicide El Prado NM USA Phoenix AZ USA Centerville UT USA Nathan Ghostkeeper Prince George BC Canada Greenville SC USA Takaru Anu Denver CO USA Quincy CA USA PierrevL Pretoria 06 South Africa Victorville CA USA Andreas Solem Oslo 12 Norway JollyGeri Millbrook NY USA lifedesignmuse Houston Texas USA PresentCostt Memphis Tennessee USA Edward H. Spokane Washington USA sol de fuego Rho Lombardy Italy Uncovering the Harmonic Matrix	cc/2019-30/en_middle_0059.json.gz/line1710
__label__cc	0.689467	0.310533	Date for Betfred Cup semi-final draw The draw for the semi-finals of the Betfred Cup will be made at McDiarmid Park on Wednesday September 26. It will be broadcast live on BT Sport following their coverage of St Johnstone v Celtic, kick-off 7.45pm. Semi-final ties are scheduled for the weekend of October 27/28, with the final on Sunday December 2. Weekend In Numbers Betfred Cup MD2 Summer signings Ojo joins Dons Pars win in Paisley Helander joins Rangers Betfred Cup MD1 review Hearts beat United on penalties New season starts tonight! Killie win on European return	cc/2019-30/en_middle_0059.json.gz/line1712
__label__cc	0.70265	0.29735	« Dan Lebental talks to Debra Kaufman Copy to Source Monitor » Did Apple Know What They Were Doing? For those of us fascinated by the evolution of editing technology, the Final Cut Pro X release is the gift that keeps on giving. Kanen Flowers has reinvigorated his long-dormant podcast, “That Post Show” (on iTunes), and the episode released yesterday covering FCP X a month after the launch, includes Mike J. Nichols, Paul del Vecchio, Peter Wells and Larry Jordan, talking about why the application is not for pros, at least not yet. But go to Apple’s FCP site and you’ll find the word “professional” everywhere, so much so that the whole thing seems defensive — a rarity from Apple. The center of the page showcases four videos that highlight innovation in the program, again explicitly aimed at “professionals” and, shock of shocks, including screen grabs from the competition. Apple is feeling the heat, that’s for sure. They’ve damaged their biggest asset: the loyalty of their user base. Avid’s new management, by comparison, understands how precious that is (and current Media Composer users are a very loyal bunch). The conventional wisdom right now seems to be that Jobs and Ubillos knew exactly what they were doing. They deliberately accepted the loss of the pro market in order to appeal to a much larger market. We may not like it, but it was a smart business decision — or so that line of reasoning goes. But I’m not so sure. Everybody makes mistakes, even Steve Jobs. Did the people at Apple really expect this much push-back? I’ve seen too many companies get stars in their eyes going after the Hollywood market to be confident that Apple is willing to write it off. I suspect that they want it all, and they still think we’ll come around. The question is whether the FCP X interface, which lacks a source monitor or bins, can ever be patched to work for people like me. Apple has attempted to purify and clarify the editing model for a file-based era, removing anything that comes from film or linear tape. The source monitor — linear tape. Bins — film. EDLs — tape. Even in and out points are gone — again, they stem from the tape days. Frankly, I applaud that kind of out-of-the-box thinking. And there’s plenty of innovation in FCP X, innovation that I hope Avid and Adobe are busy copying. But Apple wins by taking chances, going where no one has gone before. And sometimes it goes to far. It sure seems like this is one of those times. Let me end this post with a shameless plug. If you’re thinking about moving from Final Cut to Media Composer, you need my book, “Avid Agility.” MC is not a clone of FCP. Much of what makes it so powerful and responsive is hidden. The fastest way to understand why so many people think it’s the best way to edit is to get my book. Explore posts in the same categories: Avid, Avid Agility, Avid vs. Final Cut This entry was posted on July 26, 2011 at 7:04 am and is filed under Avid, Avid Agility, Avid vs. Final Cut. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site. 7 Comments on “Did Apple Know What They Were Doing?” Grant Sundin Says: I’m on the ‘they made a mistake’ side of this discussion. They were betting that the reality distortion field would extend into the pro-post market and were surprised when it didn’t. As to whether FCPx will ever evolve to where FCP7 already was is an unanswerable question. Jan Maitland Says: To comment on your closing sentiment: I did buy your book and it’s fantastic. I was made aware of it via the Creative Cow forums and I couldn’t be happier (in fact, I’ve made it required reading for our assistants). It’s rare to get the opportunity to thank someone so directly for their efforts, but allow me a moment to do just that: Thank you for writing a book that cuts right to the chase. There’s no remedial anything in there, it’s written by a user for a user and I greatly appreciated that. As for the FCPX issue, well, let’s just say that I’m happy to have made a return to Avid in time to participate in their “comeback”. All of their “we’re listening” marketing-buzz isn’t just hyperbole, they really are and their product (MC in this case) reflects this. It took Apple the better part of 8 years to make FCP what it became and it feels like it’ll take another 8 for FCP-X to accomplish the same thing, but until that happens, I, for one, am happy to have a quality alternative as well as a dedicated pool of teachers/trainers to ease my re-entry into Media Composer. Thanks so much for the kind words. Much appreciated. The best thing about writing a book like this is connecting to other editors. I’m glad it’s been helpful to you and your team. I took a look some of the material you put up on the Utopic site — very nice work! Sean Albertson Says: Shameless plug indeed. But I’ve been using avid for almost 20 years, and I find your books priceless. Thank you, Sean! As someone who is in the “Jobs/Ubillos knew what they were doing” camp, I think that they were well aware that some of the market was going to have problems, and maybe even to leave them. But they decided that it didn’t matter, they’d pick up plenty of sales without them, both immediately and over the long and very long range). As Larry Jordan says “Let’s face it, you’re going to buy FCPx anyway.” And, while there are large companies that are thinking of switching, most individual editors (especially those finishing by themselves) are rooting for 3rd party plug-in writers to do their thing, and for Apple to come out with FCPx.1. I’d look for it fairly soon. When FCPx gets within 10% of what we want on the high end, then it will be over for most people. Not most high end professionals, but Apple isn’t going for them. Chris Bove Says: Gosh my ass hurts from being so firmly planted on the fence with this one. I’m a Mac Media Composer dude… And yet I’m starting to believe Apple knows exactly what they are doing. When playing chess, look at the whole board. My guess is this version of Final Cut is showing the beginnings of functionality that Apple plans to cross-soft on a TON of their next 5-years worth of software… and hence the changes. Sure the pro market (me included) is running away screaming. But like Jobs always does, we’ll be wowed in a year or two. See, I think Adobe Premiere is mildly OK as an edit system, but has immensely enviable cross-soft functionality with Photoshop, AE etc. Just wait – Apple will climb that mountain and possibly topple Adobe’s Queen for a checkmate. …Or maybe this is the next Newton… or hockey puck mouse… Lisa anyone?	cc/2019-30/en_middle_0059.json.gz/line1713
__label__cc	0.523133	0.476867	Volunteering is good for everybody BY TAYLOR SCHWEITZER Helping the community starts with one act of kindness. Conestoga College students who have volunteered in the community feel that it’s beneficial to be involved with organizations that they feel are important. “Volunteering can feel like a chore if you don’t see the benefit to what you are doing,” said Billy Eaton, a second-year early childhood education student. “Students should find organizations that they feel will make a difference in the world or that speak to their ideology.” There are a number of volunteer centres in Waterloo Region that offer students different ways to get involved. “Volunteer K-W has over 500 active positions that are updated daily on our site,” said Jane Hennig, executive director at Volunteer Action Centre of K-W and Area. Students can sign up for volunteer opportunities, like gift wrapping at Fairview Mall and extra Santa Claus Parade participants that best suits their schedule. “Reduced stress is one benefit to volunteering, but, of course there are other benefits related to healthier lifestyles that vary with the individual,” Hennig said. At Conestoga College, the Career Hub can help students with volunteer questions on Doon campus. “I believe that more students should volunteer in the community because it really makes a difference,” said Chelsea Wright, a first-year business marketing student. “Not only do you learn a lot, but you also gain professional experience and grow as a person. It really boosts your self-esteem.” For more information, you can contact Volunteer KW at 519-742-8610 or Conestoga College’s Career Hub by dropping in with questions or contacting staff via email at careercentre@conestogac.on.ca.	cc/2019-30/en_middle_0059.json.gz/line1714
__label__cc	0.527974	0.472026	sports / Basketball Luka Doncic wins NBA Rookie of the Year award Associated Press / 09:40 AM June 25, 2019 NBA player Luka Doncic, of the Dallas Mavericks, accepts the NBA rookie of the year award at the NBA Awards on Monday, June 24, 2019, at the Barker Hangar in Santa Monica, Calif. (Photo by Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP) SANTA MONICA, California—Luka Doncic of the Dallas Mavericks has won Rookie of the Year at the NBA Awards. The 20-year-old small forward from Slovenia accepted his trophy from RJ Barrett, who went to the New York Knicks as the No. 3 pick in the NBA draft last week. 🌟 @luka7doncic of the @dallasmavs wins the 2018-19 Rookie of the Year! #KiaROY #NBAAwards pic.twitter.com/DpUweOY65b — NBA (@NBA) June 25, 2019 Doncic was the No. 3 pick last year. The other finalists were Deandre Ayton of Phoenix and Trae Young of Atlanta. Warriors GM moves on from Kevin Durant with appreciation Ben Simmons, 76ers agree to $170 million, 5-year deal Aiming really high TAGS: Basketball, Dallas Mavericks, Luka Doncic, NBA, NBA Awards	cc/2019-30/en_middle_0059.json.gz/line1715
__label__wiki	0.957608	0.957608	Lithuanian EU Lawmaker Proposes to Grant Country's Citizenship to Saakashvili © Sputnik / Nikolai Lazarenko Lithuania's member of the European Parliament Petras Austrevicius on Friday proposed to consider the possibility to provide former Georgian president and ex-Governor of Ukraine's Odessa region Mikheil Saakashvili with the citizenship of the Baltic nation. © AFP 2019 / MANDEL NGAN Disgruntled Saakashvili Vows to Topple Ukrainian Gov't After Losing Citizenship VILNIUS (Sputnik) — On Wednesday, Ukraine's State Migration Service announced that country's President Petro Poroshenko had issued a decree rescinding Saakashvili's citizenship when it was discovered that he had provided incorrect information while applying for Ukrainian citizenship. "Saakashvili could be given Lithuania's residence permit. The former Georgian leader could create here an organization focusing on political analysis, consultations and the Lithuanian citizenship would allow him to work in Europe," Austrevicius told the Lietuvos zinios news outlet. The official added that provision of Lithuania's citizenship could not be ruled out despite certain legal difficulties. In November 2013, Saakashvili left Georgia after Giorgi Margvelashvili became the country's president. In July 2014, the prosecutor's office in Georgia pressed criminal charges against the ex-president, accusing him of embezzling $5 million from the state coffers to use for personal purposes. In 2015, Saakashvili was stripped of his Georgian citizenship after receiving a Ukrainian passport. Saakashvili to Appeal Kiev's Decision to Revoke Ukrainian Citizenship Saakashvili’s Supporters Clash With Police in Central Kiev Saakashvili to Return to Ukraine Friday Despite Revoked Citizenship - Reports citizenship, Mikheil Saakashvili, Lithuania	cc/2019-30/en_middle_0059.json.gz/line1719
__label__wiki	0.731785	0.731785	Say You Want a Revolution: Earth’s Richest 26 Own Same as World’s Poorest 50% - Report A stunning new report has revealed that the world’s 26 wealthiest people own the same level of resources as that distributed between humanity’s poorest 50 percent. Netizens in Stitches as Trump Nicknames Bezos 'Jeff Bozo' Amid Sexting Scandal Another day, another knockout tweet from President T: Donald Trump proves to be extremely creative when it comes to thinking of nicknames for his enemies, and his latest bombshell will definitely stay in people’s minds for a while. Bezos And His Mistress Are Still Together After Sexting Leak - Reports The couple is still together even after their secret affair was revealed and the tabloids obtained the world’s richest man’s sext messages. 'I Want to Breath You In': Jeff Bezos Reportedly Sexted, Sent 'D*ckpics' to His Mistress Behind Wife's Back Jeff Bezos may be the world's richest man, but not the most imaginative one, some commenters have said after his leaked Alexa-style sexts gave them the chills. Jeff And Mackenzie Bezos Have $137 Billion to Split Down the Middle Sources with direct knowledge said that the couple did not have a prenuptial agreement, so they will have to split the fortune of the world’s richest man 50/50. Alexit 'Better Than Most Marriages': Twitter Meltdown Over Amazon CEO Bezos' Divorce Social media have been rocked by news about the world's richest man, Jeff Bezos, announcing his divorce. Some have run the numbers to find out that if Bezos were to split his eye-watering $137 billion fortune with his wife, it could make her the wealthiest woman in the world. Jeff Bezos Has Been Secretly Seeing Hollywood Mogul’s Estranged Wife - Reports Amazon Billionaire Jeff Bezos, who just announced his divorce from his wife after 25 years of marriage, appears to have been secretly dating Lauren Sanchez, a former TV anchor and the wife of Hollywood talent agent Patrick Whitesell. Money Can't Buy Happiness: World's Richest Man, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos Divorcing Wife After 25-Year Marriage Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos was named by Forbes as the biggest winner of 2018, with his personal net worth growing by $28 billion between 29 December, 2017 and 17 December, 2018, reaching $126.2 billion. However, affairs in his private life are seemingly not going so well. Amazon Becomes Most Valuable Public Company in the World The company has surpassed its nearest rivals, Microsoft and Apple, with a market value of $797 billion. Amazon Hit by Strikes in Europe on Black Friday (PHOTOS) The online retail giant’s workers walked out of its logistic centers in Spain and Germany on a crucial day for sellers, marking the beginning of the Christmas shopping fever. The calls to boycott the US-based employer came from unions, demanding higher salaries better working conditions. Jeff Bezos to His Employees: ‘One Day Amazon Will Fail’ Jeff Bezos, the tech company’s founder and CEO, made a surprise warning to his stuff, pointing to the bankruptcy of Sears, one of Amazon’s major competitors. Amazon Head Bezos Loses More Than $19 Bln in Two Days, Leaves Zuckerberg Behind Despite the huge money loss, Jeff Bezos is still on top position in the Bloomberg ranking of the world's 500 richest people, with former Microsoft chief executive Bill Gates nipping at his heels. The developments came after the Nasdaq Composite Index plummeted on Monday to its lowest since April. Amazon Employees Demand CEO Stop Selling Facial Recognition Tech to Cops The company’s CEO earlier defended the firm selling facial recognition technology to US law enforcement, despite knowing the concerns voiced by Amazon’s employees. Bezos’ Blue Origin Signs On to Ship Supplies to Moon by 2023 Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’ aerospace exploration company signed a letter of intent with two German Space companies to deliver “several metric tons” of cargo to the moon over the next five years. Steve Bannon Talks Populism and Engaging With Hostile Media On this episode of Fault Lines, hosts Lee Stranahan and Garland Nixon discuss Steve Bannon's recent appearance on Bill Maher's show where he promoted his populist vision. How does Trump's former Chief Strategist view the current political climate and why does he regularly choose to engage with hostile media? Amazon Becomes Second US Company to Hit $1Trln Valuation Mark WASHINGTON (Sputnik) - US e-commerce giant Amazon.com’s valuation reached the trillion-dollar mark on Tuesday after shares rose by two percent on the NASDAQ stock exchange. Style Icon? World's Richest Man Jeff Bezos Ridiculed Over His Wardrobe Choices The New York Times has published a piece on Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, calling him a “full-fledged style icon” – the description has garnered much attention, with fellow media outlets trying to prove the newspaper wrong. Trump Slams WaPo as 'Lobbyist for Amazon', Hints at Bringing Antitrust Claims WASHINGTON (Sputnik) - US President Donald Trump said in a message on Monday that The Washington Post newspaper is an "expensive lobbyist" for Amazon.com, Inc. and suggested that antitrust claims should be brought against the company. Amazon's Jeff Bezos Becomes Richest Man on Planet Now the estate of Bezos is estimated as being worth more than $150 billion, which is $55 billion more than that of Microsoft founder Bill Gates, who now ranks second. In early July, Bloomberg also called Bezos the richest man, with $142 billion. Staff, Investors Push Amazon to Stop Selling Facial Recognition Tech to Police A group of Amazon employees sent a signed letter to CEO Jeff Bezos protesting the company’s marketing of facial recognition software to police forces. Their objection follows another letter expressing worry on the subject from some of Amazon’s biggest stockholders.	cc/2019-30/en_middle_0059.json.gz/line1721
__label__wiki	0.606959	0.606959	Russian Su-30 Jet Pulls Up to Il-76 Transport in Midair, Peeks Inside Open Hatch A remarkable video has surfaced on the Russian section of YouTube, depicting a Russian Aerospace Forces Su-30SM fighter jet as it approaches and nearly flies into the cargo hold of an Il-76 delivering humanitarian supplies to Syria. The video, reportedly filmed during a Russian humanitarian mission over Deir Ez-zor, the eastern Syrian city recently liberated from a Daesh siege, shows a crew member of the heavy Il-76 cargo plane walking up to the plane's open rear ramp, and finding a Su-30SM slowly creeping up behind the transport aircraft until it literally just several meters away from its open cargo door. The jet moves in close enough that the camera operator can clearly see the helmet-covered face of the pilot. Suddenly, the plane breaks away and begins a smooth nose dive away. The jet fighter's impressive feat immediately set internet users buzzing, with commentators taking note of the pilot's impressive skills, and the Su-30SM's capabilities, given that it was operating within powerful streams of air generated by the Il-76's engines. "Holy cripes! Even just watching this is scary," user Ian wrote in the YouTube comments section to the video. "Russia has the know-how for making the best planes and the best pilots in the world, and they have the know-how for improvising in flight. I hope the pilot doesn't get into any trouble," Alexander added. "Swagger is in pilots' blood," Evgeny wrote. © AFP 2019 / MANJUNATH KIRAN Air Force Veteran Suggests India Should Go for More Russian Su-30MKI/Su-35 Naturally, the comments section also included a few jokers: "He was checking to make sure they unloaded everything," Oleg quipped. "Daesh has been defeated; there's nothing else left to do," Ilya added. "Only the Russians can do this. Americans are pissing themselves. And how about that exit!," Vladimir joked. More serious users also offered their two cents. Husein VOO noted that "this video speaks to the phenomenal maneuverability of Russian 4++ gen aircraft. No F-22 or F-35 (of any modification), can match these capabilities. And of course good job to the pilot as well, especially for how beautifully he flew away." Alexander wrote: "This is top notch stuff. Some little boy will see this and dream about it later. Imagine how many kids will want to become military pilots if even someone like me, an old man, have been inspired." reaction, video, IL-76, Su-30SM, Russian Aerospace Forces, Syria, Russia	cc/2019-30/en_middle_0059.json.gz/line1722
__label__cc	0.545353	0.454647	All articles filed in Pakistan Conversation with Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy By: Laila Kazmi September 14, 2018 January 29, 2019 Documentary, Interview, Q/A, Video, World CinemaDocumentary film, Oscar winner, Pakistan, Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy, Tasveer South Asian Film FestivalLeave a Comment on Conversation with Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy 9/13/2018 Seattle, WA – Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy is one of the most courageous documentary filmmakers of today. I first interviewed her when she had just made her first documentary in 2003 and have followed her progression since then. So it was a great pleasure to host this conversation with Sharmeen at the Seattle University Pigott… Facebook Live: Talking Films at the 12th Tasveer South Asian Film Festival By: Laila Kazmi August 1, 2017 July 8, 2018 Facebook Live, Film, World CinemaIndependent Film, Mehreen Jabbar, PakistanLeave a Comment on Facebook Live: Talking Films at the 12th Tasveer South Asian Film Festival Tribeca alum, Pakistani director Mehreen Jabbar, and actor Adeel Husain in a post-film discussion after the Seattle screening of ‘Dobara Phir Se’ Facebook Live – Song of Lahore Q/A at 11th Tasveer Seattle South Asian Film Festival By: Laila Kazmi December 13, 2016 July 8, 2018 Documentary, Facebook Live, Q/A, World CinemaPakistan, Sachal Jazz Ensemble, Song of LahoreLeave a Comment on Facebook Live – Song of Lahore Q/A at 11th Tasveer Seattle South Asian Film Festival Directed by Andy Schoken and Pakistan’s only Oscar-winning director Sharmeen Obaid-Chinnoy, ‘Song of Lahore’ tells the story of the Sachal Jazz Ensemble, an unlikely jazz band from Lahore, Pakistan. The film premiered in Washington state with a screening at the 11th Tasveer South Asian Film Festival. Co-director Andy Schoken, Seattle native, returned to his hometown…	cc/2019-30/en_middle_0059.json.gz/line1723
__label__cc	0.591421	0.408579	Motion 5: Alpha type analysis of media with an alpha channel may not be determined correctly When a media file with an alpha channel is imported into Motion, the alpha type of the alpha channel may not be determined correctly. In the Media pane of the Inspector, choose the appropriate option (detailed below) from the Alpha Type pop-up menu to manually set the Alpha Type for the selected media. None/Ignore: The default setting for objects with no alpha channel. This option also allows you to ignore an object’s existing alpha channel, so that the entire object is solid. Straight: Straight alpha channels are kept completely separate from the red, green, and blue channels of an image. Media files using straight alpha channels appear perfectly fine when used in a composition, but they may look odd when viewed in another application. Translucent effects such as volumetric lighting or lens flares in a computer-generated image may appear distorted until the clip is used in a composition. If Straight is chosen, but you see a black, white, or colored fringe around the object, this parameter is incorrectly set and should be changed to one of the Premultiplied options, depending on the color of the fringe. Premultiplied-Black: This type of alpha channel is multiplied with the clip’s red, green, and blue channels. As a result, objects with premultiplied alpha channels always look correct, even with translucent lighting effects, because the entire image is precomposited against a solid color. This option interprets alpha channels that have been precomposited against black. Premultiplied-White: This option interprets alpha channels that have been precomposited against white. More About Alpha Channels &NewLine;Ordinary video clips and image files have three channels of information, one each for the red, green, and blue channels. Many video and image file formats also support an alpha channel which contains additional information that defines areas of transparency. An alpha channel is a grayscale channel where white represents areas of 100 percent opacity (solid), gray regions represent partially opaque areas, and black represents 0 percent opacity (transparent). &NewLine;When you import a QuickTime movie or an image file into your project, its alpha channel is immediately recognized by Motion. The alpha channel is then used to composite that object against any other objects that are behind it. &NewLine;There are two different ways of embedding alpha channel information into files, and Motion attempts to automatically determine which type of alpha channel a particular object uses: Straight: Straight alpha channels are kept completely separate from the red, green, and blue channels of an image. Media files using straight alpha channels appear perfectly fine when used in a composition, but they may look odd when viewed in another application. Translucent effects such as volumetric lighting, or lens flares in a computer generated image may appear distorted until the clip is used in a composition. Premultiplied: This type of alpha channel is multiplied with the clip’s red, green, and blue channels. As a result, objects with premultiplied alpha channels always look correct, even with translucent lighting effects, because the entire image is precomposited against a solid color. Most commonly, premultiplied alpha channels are multiplied against black or white. The only time it really matters which kind of alpha channel an object has is when Motion doesn’t correctly determine it. If an object’s alpha channel has been set to Straight in the Media list when it’s really premultiplied, it may appear fringed with the premultiplied color around its edges. If this happens, you can select the problematic clip in the Media list, then change its Alpha Type parameter in the Media pane of the Inspector. This document will be updated as more information becomes available.	cc/2019-30/en_middle_0059.json.gz/line1731
__label__cc	0.634622	0.365378	Military medical discharge in Scotland What is the procedure? Medical discharge varies depending on the Service that you belong to. If you are, or have been injured or sick during Service, you may go before a medical board to have your medical grading assessed. Be aware that this may not necessarily lead to medical discharge. A medical board will assess your physical and mental capacity and can make a recommendation regarding discharge. An Occupational Health team makes the final decision if a patient will be medically discharged. What are terminal benefits? Depending on the length of your service, your pension scheme, and the severity of your injuries, you may receive terminal benefits, a benefit paid to you upon discharge. For more information, contact the Joint Personnel Enquiry Centre (JPAC) on 0800 085 3600. Can I claim further compensation? If your injury was attributable to Service, and you are facing medical discharge, you may be entitled to claim a War Pension if the injury occurred before 6 April 2005, or Armed Forces compensation if the injury was sustained on or after 6 April 2005. Contact Veterans UK for more information. The Armed Services Advice Project, delivered by Citizens Advice Bureaux in Scotland, provides dedicated information, advice and support for the Armed Forces community. Visit the ASAP website for advice and support. Legion Scotland offer advice and support to veterans pursuing War Pensions and Armed Forces Compensation claims. Their help ranges from filling in forms to presenting your case to a tribunal. For support, contact Legion Scotland. SSAFA - the Armed Forces charity, offer one-to-one mentoring for people who have been medically discharged. They can help you identify new career opportunities and offer advice about transitioning out of the service. Visit the SSAFA website for further information.	cc/2019-30/en_middle_0059.json.gz/line1734
__label__cc	0.565356	0.434644	Opinion/Editorial The Bellarion 100 Heighe Street · Bel Air, MD 21014 · 410-638-4600 BADC Presents “Joesph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat” Lauren Winn, A&E Editor Last week, the Bel Air Drama Company’s production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat was shown. There were four showings from Thursday, April 11 to Saturday, April 13 2019. Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat is based off the biblical story of Joseph in the book of Genesis. Joseph had the ability to interpret dreams, therefore making him the favorite of twelve sons, which his brothers envy him for. So, they decided to get rid of him once their father gave Joseph a beautiful coat of many colors. Joseph became a slave and a prisoner before being asked to interpret the Egyptian Pharaoh’s strange dream. He discovered what the dream meant, and it eventually came true. The Pharaoh then made Joseph his second-in-command. Eventually Joseph is reunited with his brothers and his father, Jacob, and all is well. The BADC did a phenomenal job in their production of Joseph. The one thing that stuck out to me was the vocals. From the solos to the entire choir vocalizing, everyone’s voices blended together in harmony, and it was the best part of the show in my opinion. “Our performances went super smooth,” junior Sophia Kaminaris says. “The rehearsal process was exhausting but we were putting 110% into everything we did which made it worth it in the end. It was so much fun!” Sophia was casted as one of the four narrators. There were comical moments throughout the show, which made the show even better. I’m sure everyone’s favorite parts were the dancing cacti or the guy doing the backflips on stage. I thought the props were also very cool in the show. The cast and crew make their props from scratch, which I think is great and really shows their dedication to the show. From making the sphinx to painting the stage a sandy color, BADC members’ love of theater is obvious. “Joseph was my last chance to be on stage with all my senior friends,” choir member Lara Marinich. “This show gave me and my friends an opportunity to have lots of fun.” The Bel Air Drama Company’s production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat was great, and we can’t wait to see what’s in store for next year’s productions. Senior Class Trip Information Upcoming Pokémon Games Generating Great Excitement Family-Teacher Connection Night Where’s All the Snow? Softball Takes One Win and One Loss in a Busy Week Top 5 Upcoming Games of 2019 Boys’ Lacrosse Picks Up Second Win in a Row Anna Todd’s Trilogy Finally Sees the Light of Day	cc/2019-30/en_middle_0059.json.gz/line1742
__label__wiki	0.84092	0.84092	downzones The J Is for Judge: Save the Past, Jeopardize the Future August 14, 2018 August 15, 2018 / Josh Feit / 12 Comments It turns out it wasn’t a NIMBY uprising in Seattle’s single-family neighborhoods that successfully blitzed new housing development in Seattle. Embraced by our supposedly progressive council and Mayor Jenny Durkan, a reactionary stand in the heart of downtown Seattle to save a two-story music venue, the Showbox, has set the precedent for successful self-centered obstructionism. In 2017, the city council passed a series of six neighborhood upzones: five in densely populated commercial/residential Urban Centers including downtown, South Lake Union, Chinatown International District, Uptown, and the University District, and one in a Residential Urban Village, 23rd & Union-Jackson, a less dense but still bustling multifamily combo residential/commercial zone. The unanimous council votes to upzone these multifamily, transit-rich neighborhoods were mostly embraced by neighborhood groups—most notably on 23rd, where community relations with the city had initially been tense. The upzones, under a policy known as MHA (Mandatory Housing Affordability), tied new development to building affordable housing, trading increased density for affordable housing requirements; MHA has a goal of creating 6,000 affordable units in 10 years. Any developer that builds in these upzoned neighborhoods has to either make a commensurate payment into a city affordable housing fund or build a corresponding amount of affordable housing on site. What I didn’t expect was that a pro-housing, pro-density urban center like downtown, where the upzone is already on the books, would turn out to be the Seattle NIMBYs’ Battle of Yorktown. Following up this year, the city turned to a comprehensive upzone in Seattle’s remaining Urban Centers and Urban Villages, multifamily areas of varying density ranging from the rest of the city’s more dense Urban Centers like Northgate and Capitol Hill to Residential Urban Villages such as Rainier Beach and Crown Hill. This larger rezone, which ultimately includes 27 neighborhoods, also encompasses additional multi-family and commercial zones on the outskirts of the city’s single-family zones. The 27 upzones would slightly expand ten of the Urban Center and Urban Village zones. The result: About six percent of the adjacent SFZs, where only detached single-family housing is currently allowed, would be rezoned into slightly denser Residential Small Lot zones, Lowrise zones, and Neighborhood Commercial zones, adding what pro-housing urbanists call “Missing Middle” housing—small-scale developments that fit in seamlessly with single-family housing. Like the original six hub urban center upzones, the broader upzones all came with MHA requirements to build or fund affordable housing. Given that SFZs take up a lopsided 65 percent of the city’s developable land, rezoning a slender six percent of the SFZs for multifamily housing seems more than reasonable, especially at a time when Seattle isn’t building enough housing to keep up with our dramatic population growth. However, the upzones have stalled: A coalition of appellants representing single family zones are currently fighting the upzone in front of the city hearing examiner. And it drags on and on. Despite the welcoming “In this House” signs that are ubiquitous throughout Seattle’s SFZs, the foot-stomping intransigence from exclusive single-family neighborhoods against adding housing to their suburban-style enclaves is hardly surprising. Seattle’s liberal hypocrisy rolls that way. What I didn’t expect was that a pro-housing, pro-density urban center like downtown— where the upzone is already on the books—would turn out to be the Seattle NIMBYs’ Battle of Yorktown. The fight to “Save the Showbox” has stalled one of the first building proposals to come under the new progressive MHA policy—Vancouver developer Onni’s proposal to replace the Showbox with a 440-foot, 442-unit apartment tower with ground-level retail that would have raised $5 million in one fell swoop for affordable housing. In yet another city hall 180, the council voted yesterday to turn last year’s unanimous yea vote to upzone downtown, into a unanimous nay vote for Rock and Roll NIMBYism. The city council voted this week to renege on downtown MHA by making the two-story Showbox off-limits. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised by this either. With its 2018 Pearl Jam mania, Seattle idles in nostalgia. I understand that unchecked hyper development comes with serious problems like gentrification. But the way to fight gentrification isn’t through symbolic battles on behalf of specific, popular businesses. The way to fight gentrification is by having integrated development and land-use policies that keep affordable housing in the mix in the first place. With the MHA upzones, the city had that very policy in place. Now, by caving to the first reactionary uprising against the exact policy outcomes MHA was enacted to produce—more housing and more affordable housing—the council has shown that crowd politics informed by nostalgia and resistance-to-change have trumped (ahem) a well-calibrated policy. I feel like Johnny Rotten walking around London in 1975 in his “I Hate Pink Floyd” T-shirt when I say this: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ the Showbox. Someone who supports saving the Showbox asked me if I would ever take the side of historic preservation over development. Of course. I visited the reclaimed Lorraine Motel in Memphis earlier this year. American History. Amazing. But arts venues with cool marquees are hardly a rare breed; the Moore, the Paramount, the Egyptian, and the Neptune all come to mind. And there’s plenty of great places to see music in Seattle. I’ve been to a ton of great shows already this year—DoNormaal and Nightspace (Kremwerk), Umami Goddess (Vermillion), Serpent With Feet (Barboza), Wayne Horvitz (the Royal Room), Lorde (Key Arena), Liz Phair and Lisa Prank (the Crocodile), Stas Thee Boss (Chop Suey), Mortuary Drape (The Highline), Mourn and Chastity (Barboza), Orpheus and Eurydice (Seattle Opera Studios). But when it comes to stopping legal development that includes $5 million for affordable housing because you want to save a club whose historic value is as omnipresent as 90s nostalgia? You lost me at NIMBY.	cc/2019-30/en_middle_0059.json.gz/line1744
__label__wiki	0.932057	0.932057	Foundation essays US A bough shelter made for the funeral of W. Willika in the remote Northern Territory community of Barunga. Photo: Claire Smith A grave omission: the quest to identify the dead in remote NT August 1, 2018 4.19pm EDT Claire Smith, Gary Jackson, Jordan Ralph, Jasmine Willika, Flinders University Claire Smith Professor of Archaeology, College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, Flinders University Gary Jackson Research Associate in Archaeology, Flinders University Jordan Ralph PhD Candidate, Archaeology, Flinders University Jasmine Willika Archaeology student, Flinders University Claire Smith's fieldwork at Barunga has received funding from the Australian Research Council, the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, the Ian Potter Foundation and Flinders University. In the response to the needs outlined in this article, she has established a research service through Flinders University, called Grave Concerns, to identify unmarked graves in remote Aboriginal communities. Gary Jacksons is working with Claire Smith to provide a service to identify unmarked graves in remote Aboriginal communities. Jordan Ralph receives funding from an Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship and Flinders University to support his research into modern material culture and graffiti in the Aboriginal community of Barunga, Northern Territory. He is working with Claire Smith to provide a service to identify unmarked graves in remote Aboriginal communities. Jasmine Willika is working with Claire Smith to provide a service to identify unmarked graves in remote Aboriginal communities. Flinders University provides funding as a member of The Conversation AU. It’s hard to believe, but in 2018 the vast majority of graves of Aboriginal people in remote Northern Territory communities are not recorded in any register. When someone dies they are buried, but there’s no written record of which grave belongs to whom. Virtually every member of the remote Aboriginal community of Barunga in the NT has a relative lying in an unmarked grave in the local cemetery – but they don’t know exactly where they are. For Jasmine Willika, it is her sister and grandmother. For Joyce Bulumbara, her father. For Isaac Pamkal, his father and grandmother. Isaac Pamkal. Photo: Claire Smith The identity of the person buried in an unmarked grave is remembered by loved ones for some time. Plastic flowers may mark it, until they erode. But there was no cultural tradition of headstones, or money to pay for them even if there had been. (In traditional burials, a person’s bones were put in a lorrkon and placed in a cave.) After a while, people forget who is buried where. In time, the remembering generation also dies. So, the identities of people in these graves become more and more blurred. This makes it difficult to mourn properly, or to care for that person by caring for their grave. And there are other distressing ramifications. In 1998, there were record floods in the region. In the neighbouring community of Beswick/Wugularr, a number of coffins rose to the surface. No-one knew who was in them. In the past, the dead have also been accidentally unearthed at Barunga by those digging new graves. Today, family members select grave sites after consulting the Junggayi, the senior traditional custodian. This is a Territory-wide problem: the result of structural racism. Like the infamous Northern Territory National Emergency Response of 2007, race-based discrimination is enacted through geography. While the graves of people in major towns must be registered, it has not been compulsory to record the location of graves of Aboriginal people in remote areas. The situation dates back to 1890s laws enacted when the South Australian government administered the NT. A spokeswoman for the NT government has said new cemeteries legislation is being drafted and will be available for public consultation in October this year. “The new legislation will have similar requirements for urban and regional cemeteries,” she said. Jasmine Willika (right) with her mother, Rachael Kendino, try to identify graves at Barunga, which include Jasmine’s sister and her grandmother. Photo: Claire Smith However, remote commmunities need money to employ people to record graves. “The government needs to allocate resources to solve this problem,” says Barunga resident Helen Lee. “It is not going to solve itself. Across the Territory, there has been 150 years of neglect.” In the meantime, graves must be identified. While some remote communities are tiny and/or recent, others have been around for more than 100 years. The bigger ones could have hundreds of unmarked graves. A community calls for help In April this year, community elder Guy Rankin called Claire Smith and Gary Jackson asking us to record the Barunga graveyard. We had undertaken this work in 2013, in response to a community request, but the work needed updating. In June, Roper Gulf Regional Council, which has administrative responsibilities for a number of remote communities including Barunga, also contacted us. Our task was to number the graves at Barunga cemetery and record biographical details of the deceased as told to us by community elders. To ensure this information can be passed on to a local authority, we developed a map and recorded archaeological information about each grave, such as the ornaments left by family members. The community of Barunga was established in 1951. Prior to that, Aboriginal people in this area were mostly hunter gatherers. Though traditional burial practices, like lorrkon and rockshelter burials, persisted for many years after Aboriginal people moved into communities, over time cemeteries became the norm. We estimate that the first burials at Barunga occurred in the 1960s. People were wrapped in cloth or calico. Coffins came later. This year we (and students from the Community Archaeology Field School) recorded 174 graves. Only 25 of these have plaques identifying them as belonging to a particular individual. Our research team encompasses both university staff and people from the community, including Jasmine Willika, who is studying archaeology. Gary Jackson records a grave number on a star picket. Photo: Claire Smith The first step is to number each grave and mark it with a star picket. We then visit the cemetery with community members, trying to identify who is in the unmarked graves. This complex process is repeated many times, with different people. They will likely remember recent deaths within their family, but after ten or so years it becomes harder to be sure that this person is in this exact grave, not the one next to it — or over a little. Sometimes, one person’s memory will spark that of another. We record whom identified who with a particular grave. If the same identification occurs a number of times we feel secure in putting a name to it. This cross-checking is essential to the reliability of the data. So far, we have identified 30 individuals using this process. That leaves 119 still unknown. After identification, we record a deceased person’s moiety, clan and kinship relationships. Vanessa Wakelin and Rusalka Rubio Perez record grave information on tablets. Photo: Dylan Benedetto It is a challenge to catch everyone, as these are mobile communities. Though there is a small shop at Barunga, it’s expensive. People regularly go to Katherine to shop or deal with government agencies, or travel to other communities to visit relatives — or attend funerals. We record the dimensions of the grave, its orientation and stylistic features on a tablet, in a form that has the capacity to act as a burial register. We hope to fill in some blanks with information from official death registers. If we are able to “bracket” a grave with the names of people on either side, we can cross-reference the death dates of those people with other community deaths registered at that time. However, it is too late to identify many of those buried in the early graves. Jordan Ralph, Antoinette Hennessy, Nell Brown, Rachael Kendino, Elizabeth Coleman, Claire Smith. Photo: Gary Jackson So far, we have only identified graves from their surface appearance. Our next step will be using ground-penetrating radar in the older parts of the cemetery. The ground in these sections is mostly flat. However, the radar can identify anomalies where earth has been disturbed. This will make it possible to respect individual graves, even if the people in them cannot be identified. When our work at Barunga is completed there will be a recording system in place and a burial register managed by local Aboriginal people. This will help in planning the location of future graves. The community plans to place headstones on each grave, with those on unidentified graves perhaps identifying them as belonging to a Barunga elder. We have also established a research group, called Grave Concerns, and plan to work in other communities, training Aboriginal people across the NT in recording graves. Burial practices in Barunga today Today, Aboriginal burial practices at Barunga include elements of both traditional and Christian belief systems. Usually, there is a Christian service in the Barunga church. It is normal practice for a dead person to be brought to the community the day before. The coffin is placed in a bough shelter built for the occasion. It is wrapped in yellow and red cloth. This complies with the cultural rule that the light colours of the Yirritja moiety should be joined with the darker colours of the Dhuwa moiety. During the night and in the morning, family members spend private time with the deceased. People walking to the Barunga cemetery for the funeral of W. Willika in 2015. Photo: Claire Smith Barunga has a population of around 350 people. Virtually the entire community walks to the cemetery. People dress in black and white. At the grave, the songs are normally Christian, but Aboriginal in enactment. The songs are sung in Kriol, accompanied by elegant hand and arm movements that expand on, or embody, their meanings. There may or may not be a pastor. Close family members and friends of W. Willika prior to his burial at Barunga cemetery in 2015. Photo: Matthew Ebbs For Jasmine Willika, the quest to identify remote graves at Barunga is deeply personal. “This is my family, my blood,” she says. My grandmother, Lilly Willika, was a very strong cultural woman. When I hear about her, I feel like I can follow in her footsteps. I have cultural knowledge passed down from her. That helps in doing archaeology. Her grave is at Barunga cemetery, but I don’t know where. I want my children’s children to know where they can find my old grandmother and other family members. Photographs published with the permission of Traditional Owners and Custodians. Indigenous policy Aboriginal communities Social media has become a powerful platform to cope with grief. shutterstock How the internet is changing the way we grieve Children become aware of death from an early age. shutterstock Death: why children should be taught about it in school Illustration of Dante’s Paradiso. Giovanni di Paolo What is heaven? Murri sculptures (2012) by Reko Rennie (Kamilaroi) at Melbourne’s LaTrobe University. LaTrobe University Ten classics of Indigenous design	cc/2019-30/en_middle_0059.json.gz/line1745
__label__wiki	0.627895	0.627895	2017 U.S. World Trials Preview: New Age In Men’s 1500 With Wilimovsky out of World Trials, the men's 1500 now becomes wide open. Archive photo via Tim Binning/TheSwimPictures.com 2017 USA Swimming Summer Nationals Event PageResults Psych Sheets All Event Previews All Selection Procedures Live Stream & Race Video (US) Live Stream (International) More 2017 USA Swimming Summer Nationals WATCH: All Race Videos From The 2017 U.S. National Championships Watch all race videos from the 2017 U.S. National Championships in Indianapolis. 2017 U.S. World Champs Trials: SwimSwam Awards Mallory Comerford was one of several swimmers who had stand out meets last week at the 2017 U.S. Nationals and World Championships Trials. Dave Durden comments on Men’s 2017 Worlds Team (Video) Now that the U.S. World Championship Trials have wrapped up, it’s time to take a look at their roster for Budapest and give it a little analysis. Greg Meehan comments on Women’s 2017 Worlds Team (Video) Team USA will take 24 men and 21 women to Budapest next month for the 2017 World Championships. Cal Men, Stanford Women Top Team Scores At U.S. Nationals The Cal men and Stanford women led team scores at the 2017 U.S. National Championships. Caeleb Dressel: “I’ve had nightmares about that race” (Video) Caeleb Dressel had it from the start, exploding into his breakout with an advantage and never relinquishing it, winning the men’s 50 in a time of 21.53 Abbey Weitzeil talks through rough transition of freshman year (Video) Though this year hasn’t been the easiest for Abbey Weitzeil, she was able to keep it light and fun enough to put herself back on team USA Simone Manuel: “I think I put too much pressure on myself” (Video) Simone Manuel executed a great 50 free tonight, winning by nearly half a second in 24.27 to move into #3 in the world James Sutherland by James Sutherland 21 June 12th, 2017 National, Previews & Recaps Share 2017 U.S. World Trials Preview: New Age In Men’s 1500 on Facebook Tweet 2017 U.S. World Trials Preview: New Age In Men’s 1500 Submit 2017 U.S. World Trials Preview: New Age In Men’s 1500 to Reddit Share 2017 U.S. World Trials Preview: New Age In Men’s 1500 on Pinterest Share 2017 U.S. World Trials Preview: New Age In Men’s 1500 on LinkedIn Find links to all of our event-by-event previews here. 2017 U.S. Nationals & World Trials June 27 – July 1, 2017 IU Natatorium (on IUPUI campus) World Championship Selection Criteria Connor Jaeger has long been the dominant force the U.S. in the men’s 1500. After breaking through and finishing 6th at the Olympics in 2012, he steadily improved through the quad before taking silver last summer in Rio. He also won silver at the 2015 World Championships, gold at the 2014 Pan Pacs, and lowered the American Record from 14:45 to 14:39 over his four year tenure. After the 2016 Games Jaeger opted to walk away from the sport, at least for the time being, leaving the door wide open for the next generation of American distance swimmers to walk through and take over. Luckily for the U.S., it doesn’t look like they’ll have to wait for their next great miler, as one man emerged last summer as a premier international contender. That man is Jordan Wilimovsky, who placed 4th at the Olympics last summer, becoming the 2nd fastest American ever behind Jaeger. Wilimovsky first indicated that he was one to watch in this event with his win at the 2012 Junior Nationals, but his big breakthrough came at the 2014 Nationals. After establishing a PB of 15:15 earlier in the season, he dropped a 14:56.34 to take 3rd and qualify for the Pan Pac team. Along with easily winning the 2015 National title in the mile, Wilimovsky also became the World Champion in the 10K Open Water event. With Olympic qualification sewn up with that win, he went after a spot in the pool as well at the Olympic Trials, getting the job done in the 1500 with a new PB of 14:49 and pushing Jaeger the entire race. In Rio he got all the way down to 14:45.03 for that 4th place finish, and followed it up with a very impressive 5th in the Open Water event just three days later, missing a medal by 1.2 seconds and gold by just 3.4. With both Jaeger and Michael McBroom out of competition this year, Wilimovsky has a nearly 20 second advantage over the next fastest American miler – True Sweetser. Couple that with the fact that American Record holder and 2017 NCAA Champ in the 1650 Clark Smith won’t swim the 1500 at Trials, Wilimovsky has this all but locked up. Though Wilimovsky seems to have the first spot all but sewn up, there should be an immense battle for the #2 spot on the World’s team. The 2016 Olympic Trials saw a bunch of youngsters step up and put together some impressive swims. Behind Jaeger, Wilimovsky and McBroom, Chris Wieser, PJ Ransford, Logan Houck and Robert Finke took 4th through 7th in the final, all earning personal bests either in the heats or final, or both. After his breakthrough in Omaha Wieser wasn’t really on the radar heading into the NCAA Championships this year after a so-so season, but he dropped 25 seconds from his season best for a solid 12th place finish. He was about half a second better than he was at the 2016 meet, indicating we should expect him to be around his Olympic Trials form, where he went 15:09.70. Ransford set the pace early on in this year’s epic 1650 final, and swam his two fastest-ever 1500s back-to-back in Omaha, going 15:09 in prelims and 15:12 in the final. He was only 15:44 at the Arena Pro Series in Atlanta, but in-season 1500s often don’t tell us much other than that swimmers are in heavy training. Expect him to be a major factor. Houck is an interesting case. Between 2015 Nationals, 2016 Trials and the 2016 US Open he was very consistent, coming in between 15:13 and 15:16 at all three meets. However, his best 1500 this season has only been 16:30. Despite no good showings in long course so far this year, he was slightly faster at the Ivy League Championships this year in the 1650 than he was last year. We’ll have to wait and see where he’s at come trials. Robert Finke is one who could easily snag that second spot. After placing 7th at trials and clocking a best of 15:15, he took 3rd at the US Open in 15:14 at the beginning of August and closed the month with a pair of gold medals at the Junior Pan Pacs, including a new PB of 15:05 in the mile. With that trajectory, he could very well join the elusive sub-15:00 club this summer. True Sweetser, who we mentioned was the second fastest American miler behind Wilimovsky, swam his best of 15:04 at the last year’s US Open. He had a disappointing Olympic Trials placing 14th, but rebounded well with that swim. He had a so-so NCAAs and was slow coming out of the gate this long course season, but has rounded into form nicely. At the final stop of the Arena Pro Series in Santa Clara Sweetser went 8:01 in the 800 and 15:23 in the 1500, ranking him 1st and 3rd respectively among Americans so far this year. Look for him to potentially push that 15-minute barrier as well. What all these guys did last year was impressive, but we have yet to mention the two fastest Americans so far this year: Andrew Abruzzo and Zane Grothe. Abruzzo dropped a big PB of 15:15.99 in March of 2016 at the Orlando Pro Swim, and gained some experience in the summer placing 13th in Omaha and 2nd at the Junior Pan Pacs in Maui. He leads the US rankings this year with his best of 15:13.95 done at the Indianapolis Pro Swim. Some might be skeptic about him improving on that 15:13 because his fastest swim last season was done at one of the Pro Swim Series as well, but he’s young enough that we could easily see a big drop this summer. A veteran of three Olympic Trials, Grothe will be the elder statesmen of the field. He cranked out a best time of 15:11.72 in prelims at the 2016 Trials, but faltered in the final a day later adding 19 seconds. This time around the 1500 will be a timed final so that won’t be an issue, and after a 14:29 1650 in February we could see him push for that second spot. However, there’s also a chance he doesn’t swim this, as it’s on the first day and is obviously a very taxing event. He’ll have to decide whether or not he wants to risk it, as his best events, the 400 and 800, are on the final two days of the meet. Michael Brinegar is another up-and-coming threat who looks good to crack the top-8. He posted a 12-second best time at the Indy Pro Swim in 15:25.7 and is on the rise. Adam Linker is also a threat after clocking 15:17 in Omaha, just missing the final. Update: Wilimovsky has since confirmed he plans on skipping World Trials to focus solely on the 10K Open Water at the World Championships. This moves Robert Finke into 1st and True Sweetser into 2nd in our picks. *Update: Upon release of the psych sheets, Zane Grothe has opted to not compete in the 1500, choosing to focus on the 200/400/800. Adam Linker, also picked in our top-8, is not competing at the meet. Aaron Apel and Taylor Abbott thus move into our top-8 predictions. TOP 8 PICKS: PLACE SWIMMER BEST TIME SINCE 2015 PREDICTED TIME – Jordan Wilimovsky 14:45.03 14:51.4 1 Robert Finke 15:05.29 15:02.7 2 True Sweetser 15:04.52 15:03.6 – Zane Grothe 15:11.72 15:08.5 3 Andrew Abruzzo 15:13.95 15:10.8 4 PJ Ransford 15:09.04 15:13.9 5 Chris Wieser 15:09.70 15:16.3 6 Michael Brinegar 15:25.70 15:20.9 – Adam Linker 15:17.75 15:21.1 7 Aaron Apel 15:17.60 15:21.6 8 Taylor Abbott 15:16.35 15:24.2 « An Ode To The Goodie Bag Australia’s Patterson Closes Indi Para World Series With Two Wins » Chris Wieser Connor Jaeger Jordan Wilimovsky Michael Brinegar Michael McBroom Taylor Abbott True Sweetser Zane Grothe Hswimmer Grothe top 2 Vote Up28-3Vote Down Reply Is Jordan even going to the Trials? Vote Up3-5Vote Down Reply Joel Lin I believe the Jaeger progression his best time is spot on, but that was not the progression of the American Record in the 1500. Larsen Jensen went 14:41 in Athens 2004 and that record stood until Jaeger finally brok through the 14:40 barrier. swimmyman Jensen was 14:45 in Athens. Vanderkaay also went 14:45 at some point. Jordan’s time of 14:45.03 currently stands as the 2nd best time done by an American. Whoops. Sorry, I’d thought otherwise. Corrected. Load Rest of Comments About James Sutherland James formerly competed for the Laurentian Voyageurs in Sudbury, Ontario, specializing in the 200 free, back and IM. He finished up his collegiate swimming career in February of 2018, placing 11th at the OUA Championships in the 200 IM, and graduated with a bachelor's degree in economics in May. He … More from James Sutherland Additional Betting Odds Released For Worlds; Sjostrom -1000 In 50 Fly Betting Odds Released For Men’s 100 Freestyle At World Championships University of Calgary Swim Club Girls Break NAG In 13-14 400 Medley Relay 2019 Worlds Preview: Next Generation Closing In On Veterans In Women’s 200 Free Linnea Mack Fires Off Three Best Times At Arena Grand Challenge	cc/2019-30/en_middle_0059.json.gz/line1748
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And for those few items in your closet for which you do, you have to then find the time and extra budget to make a trip all the way to the cleaners and back again. In the end ...more How To : Can't Double Click to Install? Here's How to Download Apps & Use Apple Pay on the iPhone X If you used Touch ID on an iPhone before, all you had to do to install apps and games from the App Store was rest your fingertip on the Home button. On the iPhone X, there's Face ID instead, and Apple has included on-screen instructions to help everyone adjust to the lack of H ...more How To : 5 Simple Ways to Keep Your Bathroom Mirror from Fogging Up Getting hot and steamy can be awesome, as illustrated in the 1997 smash hit Titanic. But having the bathroom mirrors fog up during a nice hot shower can be very annoying. Getting ready in the morning can already be rush, and having to wipe down your mirrors after your shower i ...more How To : See Battery Life for Paired Bluetooth Accessories on Android The iPhone has a feature that lets you see how much juice is left in your Bluetooth headphones, but most Android phones are lacking this ability. Thankfully, there's a simple app that'll close this gap in functionality. To be clear, some custom ROMs and manufacturer-skinned v ...more How To : Bypass the UK's New "Adult" Filter & Unlock the Wank Bank Online for Good What you watch in the privacy of your own home should be no one's business but yours. That was the case until Prime Minister David Cameron decided that there was too much porn available to minors in the United Kingdom. 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If you've ever used Activator on a jailbroken iPhone, you know the ...more How To : Set a Charging Limit on Your Android Device to Avoid Excess Battery Wear There's a lot of conflicting information out there when it comes to the best habits for charging a smartphone's battery, so let's clear some of that up right off the bat. Lithium ion batteries (the type used in most modern electronics) start to lose their ability to hold a cha ...more How To : Remove Gamers Unite from your Facebook Account I recommend you take a look into this issue and suggest that your friends delete their association with Gamers Unite and any other cheat providing site. This post is meant only as my advice for how to remove Gamers Unite or any other spammy app. This is all based on my persona ...more How To : Enable the Chromecast Screen Mirroring Feature At last month's I/O event, Google demonstrated a set of cool new features that were said to be coming to the Chromecast soon. While we may not be able to set custom backgrounds or cast content without being on the same WiFi network just yet, the biggest feature of them all has ...more News: Apple Just Released iOS 13 Public Beta 2, Includes FaceTime Attention Correction, Cursor Sizing Options & More	cc/2019-30/en_middle_0059.json.gz/line1751
__label__cc	0.53272	0.46728	Prose fiction overviews, Tie-in book series Virgin Decalogs Virgin Books 17 March 1994 - 18 September 1997 Decalog was a series of short story anthologies published by Virgin Books. Following the success of their New Adventures, Virgin Books launched the Decalog series in 1994 as a way to publish shorter Doctor Who fiction. The first three Decalog anthologies featured the first seven incarnations of the Doctor. After Virgin Books lost its Doctor Who license in 1997, Decalog 4: Re:Generations concerned the family and history of New Adventures character Roz Forrester. Decalog 5: Wonders strayed even further from its origins, with most of its stories having no apparent connection to the Doctor Who universe. BBC Books continued the Decalog format of multi-Doctor short stories by launching the Short Trips series of books, which was later taken over by Big Finish Productions. Decalog Decalog 2: Lost Property Decalog 3: Consequences Decalog 4: Re:Generations Decalog 5: Wonders Cover gallery Edit Retrieved from "https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Virgin_Decalogs?oldid=2680213" Prose fiction overviews Tie-in book series	cc/2019-30/en_middle_0059.json.gz/line1756
__label__wiki	0.949338	0.949338	eOne takes int’l rights to Hulu’s Fyre Fraud By Kaltrina Bylykbashi 19th February 2019 @ 10:08 Entertainment One (eOne) has secured international rights to Fyre Fraud, Hulu’s feature-length doc about the failed music festival which scammed thousands of millennials. Fyre Fraud ignited conversations this year with its personal true-crime investigation of one of the biggest con-men of the last decade, Billy MacFarland. McFarland is serving 6 years in jail for deceiving thousands via a digital scam that promoted a luxury festival that was never to emerge. Marketing for the 2017 music event went viral with the help of rapper Ja Rule, Instagram stars, and models, but turned epic fail after stranding thousands in the Bahamas. Fyre Fraud is bolstered by a cast of whistle-blowers, victims and insiders going beyond the spectacle to uncover an ecosystem of enablers, driven by profit and a lack of accountability in the digital age. The doc was executive produced by Emmy- nominated and Peabody award-winning directors Jenner Furst and Julia Willoughby Nason alongside Michael Gasparro, The Cinemart, MIC and Billboard. “As soon as it was launched, this brilliantly made film garnered huge critical acclaim for its quality execution and access to the key players and has instantly become widely talked about,” commented Noel Hedges, eOne’s EVP, acquisitions and international distribution. “We are thrilled to bring this dynamic film to audiences far and wide and see that discussion spread around the world.” Tags: eOne, Fyre Fraud, Hulu Endemol Shine appoints head of digital distribution Endemol Shine Group has appointed a media strategist as its head of digital distribution and monetisation. The business has hired Kasia Jablonska to spearhead its digital distribution activities, reporting into group director of commercial operations Yannick Ferrero. Jablonska, who founded media strategy consultancy firm MK&K Consultants last year, will be responsible for building the sales strategy […] Endemol Shine exits 'Masked Singer' as Fox goes in-house for unscripted Fox is launching an in-house studio for alternative entertainment that will count the next series of The Masked Singer as one of its first productions. The hit singing format, which launched in January and is expected to return to the broadcaster as early as this autumn, will continue to be exec produced by Smart Dog […] Viacom International Studios hunts "alliances" to bolster global roll-out Viacom has made it crystal clear that its in-house global production banner is open for business and receptive to “any type of content, in any territory and in any genre”. Viacom International Studios (VIS) set up shop in Latin America last year and has begun replicating its production strategy for third parties and its own […] Sony strikes deal with Phil Lord and Chris Miller for 'Spider-Man' TV series Oscar-winning producers Phil Lord and Chris Miller have signed a five year deal with Sony Pictures Television, which will see them creative live-action and animated TV series including ones based on Sony’s Marvel characters. The deal, worth a reported nine figures, sees the Spider-Man: Into the Spider Verse writers and producers and their Lord Miller […] Disney to lose $150m in third-party licensing revenue in 2019 Applause Entertainment to remake BBC’s 'Luther' in India Iflix launches premium sports channel in Asia Inside Netflix's original documentary strategy	cc/2019-30/en_middle_0059.json.gz/line1758
__label__wiki	0.983269	0.983269	Southern Schools 2013 Grade Eight 27 March 2013 - 3 July 2013 27 March 2013 6:30 PM St Michael's Collegiate S2013D8001 Taroona High School 1 The Friends' School 1 That it should be illegal for public servants to strike 27 March 2013 6:30 PM St Michael's Collegiate S2013D8002 The Hutchins School 1 St Michael's Collegiate 1 That it should be illegal for public servants to strike 27 March 2013 6:30 PM St Michael's Collegiate S2013D8003 Ogilvie High School 1 Fahan School 1 That it should be illegal for public servants to strike 27 March 2013 6:30 PM St Michael's Collegiate S2013D8004 New Town High School 2 The Hutchins School 2 That it should be illegal for public servants to strike 27 March 2013 6:30 PM St Michael's Collegiate S2013D8005 Clarence High School 1 Ogilvie High School 2 That it should be illegal for public servants to strike 27 March 2013 6:30 PM St Michael's Collegiate S2013D8006 Taroona High School 2 St Mary's College 1 That it should be illegal for public servants to strike 27 March 2013 6:30 PM St Michael's Collegiate S2013D8007 Taroona High School 3 New Town High School 1 That it should be illegal for public servants to strike 10 April 2013 6:30 PM The Friends' School (Senior Campus) S2013D8008 The Hutchins School 1 Taroona High School 1 That schools should provide breakfasts 10 April 2013 6:30 PM The Friends' School (Senior Campus) S2013D8009 The Friends' School 1 Ogilvie High School 1 That schools should provide breakfasts 10 April 2013 6:30 PM The Friends' School (Senior Campus) S2013D8010 St Michael's Collegiate 1 New Town High School 2 That schools should provide breakfasts 10 April 2013 6:30 PM The Friends' School (Senior Campus) S2013D8011 Fahan School 1 Clarence High School 1 That schools should provide breakfasts 10 April 2013 6:30 PM The Friends' School (Senior Campus) S2013D8013 Ogilvie High School 2 Taroona High School 3 That schools should provide breakfasts 10 April 2013 6:30 PM The Friends' School (Senior Campus) S2013D8014 St Mary's College 1 New Town High School 1 That schools should provide breakfasts 15 May 2013 7:15 PM Taroona High School S2013D8015 Taroona High School 1 Ogilvie High School 1 That beauty is only skin deep 15 May 2013 7:15 PM Taroona High School S2013D8016 New Town High School 2 The Hutchins School 1 That we should ban make-up and accessories at school 15 May 2013 7:15 PM Taroona High School S2013D8017 Clarence High School 1 The Friends' School 1 That we should judge people on their appearance 15 May 2013 7:15 PM Taroona High School S2013D8018 Taroona High School 2 St Michael's Collegiate 1 That beauty is only skin deep 15 May 2013 7:15 PM Taroona High School S2013D8019 Taroona High School 3 Fahan School 1 That beauty is only skin deep 15 May 2013 7:15 PM Taroona High School S2013D8021 St Mary's College 1 Ogilvie High School 2 That we should ban make-up and accessories at school 29 May 2013 7:30 PM New Town High School S2013D8022 New Town High School 2 Taroona High School 1 That robot vacuums take the fun out of housework 29 May 2013 7:30 PM New Town High School S2013D8023 Ogilvie High School 1 Clarence High School 1 That we should replace police with robocops 29 May 2013 7:30 PM New Town High School S2013D8024 The Hutchins School 1 Taroona High School 2 Advised subject: Robots 29 May 2013 7:30 PM New Town High School S2013D8025 The Friends' School 1 Taroona High School 3 That we should replace police with robocops 29 May 2013 7:30 PM New Town High School S2013D8026 St Michael's Collegiate 1 New Town High School 1 That we should replace police with robocops 29 May 2013 7:30 PM New Town High School S2013D8027 Fahan School 1 St Mary's College 1 That we should replace police with robocops 29 May 2013 7:30 PM New Town High School S2013D8028 The Hutchins School 2 Ogilvie High School 2 That we should replace police with robocops 5 June 2013 7:30 PM Rose Bay High School S2013D8033 St Mary's College 1 The Friends' School 1 That access to Aboriginal sacred sites should be restricted 12 June 2013 6:30 PM Ogilvie High School S2013D8029 Taroona High School 1 Clarence High School 1 That access to Aboriginal sacred sites should be restricted 12 June 2013 6:30 PM Ogilvie High School S2013D8030 Taroona High School 2 New Town High School 2 That access to Aboriginal sacred sites should be restricted 12 June 2013 6:30 PM Ogilvie High School S2013D8031 Taroona High School 3 Ogilvie High School 1 That access to Aboriginal sacred sites should be restricted 12 June 2013 6:30 PM Ogilvie High School S2013D8032 New Town High School 1 The Hutchins School 1 That access to Aboriginal sacred sites should be restricted 12 June 2013 6:30 PM Ogilvie High School S2013D8034 Ogilvie High School 2 St Michael's Collegiate 1 That access to Aboriginal sacred sites should be restricted 12 June 2013 6:30 PM Ogilvie High School S2013D8035 The Hutchins School 2 Fahan School 1 That access to Aboriginal sacred sites should be restricted 26 June 2013 7:15 PM Fahan School S2013D8SF1 Ogilvie High School 1 New Town High School 1 That men's and women's sport should receive equal coverage 3 July 2013 7:15 PM St Mary's College S2013D8GF1 Ogilvie High School 1 Ogilvie High School 2 That we should stop funding the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra	cc/2019-30/en_middle_0059.json.gz/line1759
__label__wiki	0.835257	0.835257	‘World Of Warcraft 3,’ ‘Diablo 2’ Remake In The Works? Job Posting Fuels Rumors ‘World Of Warcraft 3,’ ‘Diablo… A recent job posting on Blizzard’s website for career openings has some fans speculating that a remake or remaster of Diablo II and World of Warcraft III could be on the way. The posting, which is in search of a “Senior Software Engineer, Server” for “Classic Games,” mentions the two games along with StarCraft. “Compelling stories. Intense multiplayer. Endless replayability. Qualities that made StarCraft, Warcraft III, and Diablo II the titans of their day. Evolving operating systems, hardware, and online services have made them more difficult to be experienced by their loyal followers or reaching a new generation.” Although Blizzard has yet to confirm the remakes are in the works, the next paragraph in the job posting pretty much does. “We’re restoring them to glory, and we need your engineering talents, your passion, and your ability to get tough jobs done,” the posting reads. The job posting goes on to state, “If you like wearing many hats, know small teams are the most effective, and look forward to challenges that will create millions of new adventures for our players, we would love to hear from you.” While fans wait for Blizzard’s confirmation, the company did recently announce StarCraft would be remastered. “The groundbreaking sci-fi real-time strategy game remastered in 4K Ultra High Definition, to include all content from the original award-winning game and its renowned expansion, StarCraft: Brood War,” read a press release from Blizzard. The release continued, “The remastered graphics and audio will bring a modern look and feel to the timeless classic, with widescreen UHD support for up to 4K resolution. Other updates will include new illustrations to enhance storytelling in the StarCraft and StarCraft: Brood War campaign missions; advanced matchmaking; full connectivity to Blizzard’s gaming network for social features and updates; cloud saving for campaign progress, custom maps, replays, and keybinds; support for eight new languages in addition to the original five; and more.” So with a StarCraft remaster in the works, it’s not too far-fetched to believe Blizzard is working on more remasters of its classic games. Author: Nick Mojica How has Optical Character Recognition technology improved online gaming? Basics of Game Genres for iOS and Android	cc/2019-30/en_middle_0059.json.gz/line1763
__label__wiki	0.588096	0.588096	Home > Plays > Canadian > Marion Bridge Author: Daniel MacIvor Marion Bridge was a Finalist for the 1999 Governor General's Award for Drama (Canadian equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize) Marion Bridge is a full-length drama by Daniel MacIvor. When three daughters go home to Cape Breton, they must confront not only their dying mother, but also the lives they have come to lead. Trapped by life choices and unfulfilled expectations that have left them isolated, the three women search for the courage to create a new family from the remnants of the old. Daniel MacIvor's perfectly crafted Cape Breton family drama is always a sure-fire crowdpleaser. Marion Bridge is a humorous and touching story set in the kitchen of a family home in Nova Scotia. Three sisters in their thirties come "home" to care for their dying mother. Nothing, of course, has turned out exactly the way anyone imagined it would. Each in their own way tries to deal with the painful loneliness that has come to rule her day-to-day life. The ideas of what they thought they wanted to be and what their mother wanted them to be is all the more torturous as the daughters begin to finally understand what they are and why they are that way. Marion Bridge is the humorous and touching story by Daniel MacIvor that demonstrates the absolute power of realization and how it heals as much as it harms. Marion Bridge premiered in 1998 at Mulgrave Road Theatre in Guysborough, Nova Scotia and received its off-Broadway premiere in New York in 2005. Cast: 4 women, 1 man. "This moving drama, which tiptoes toward sentimentality without ever reaching it, is the most surprising play that [MacIvor's] ever written. When was the last time you saw a drama about three distinct, complex women that had nothing to do with their relationships with men?" — New York Times "An intimate, swiftly moving family drama … a sparkling crisp script, beautifully structured, with snappy, funny lines that dart in and out quickly like swallows, not interrupting the emotional drama of the story." — Halifax Chronicle-Herald "A compelling and strikingly original theatrical text … It might be MacIvor's finest work yet." — Daily News Daniel MacIvor is one of Canada's most accomplished playwrights and performers. Winner of the Governor General's Literary Award (Canadian equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize), the prestigious Elinore and Lou Siminovitch Prize, and many others, his plays have been met with acclaim throughout North America. Daniel MacIvor: New Essays on Canadian Theatre Edited by Richie Wilcox Daniel MacIvor Never Swim Alone & This Is a Play Sale Price: $11.96 CDN His Greatness I Still Love You: Five Plays See Bob Run & Wild Abandon One Voice: House & Here Lies Henry The Best Brothers	cc/2019-30/en_middle_0059.json.gz/line1768
__label__cc	0.530266	0.469734	简体中文 (Vereinfachtes Chinesisch) 繁體中文 (Traditionelles Chinesisch) 日本語 (Japanisch) 한국어 (Koreanisch) ไทย (Thai) български (Bulgarisch) Čeština (Tschechisch) Dansk (Dänisch) English (Englisch) Español - España (Spanisch - Spanien) Español – Latinoamérica (Lateinamerikanisches Spanisch) Ελληνικά (Griechisch) Français (Französisch) Italiano (Italienisch) Magyar (Ungarisch) Nederlands (Niederländisch) Norsk (Norwegisch) Polski (Polnisch) Português (Portugiesisch) Português - Brasil (Brasil. Portugiesisch) Română (Rumänisch) Русский (Russisch) Suomi (Finnisch) Svenska (Schwedisch) Türkçe (Türkisch) Tiếng Việt (Vietnamesisch) Українська (Ukrainisch) Helfen Sie uns, Steam zu übersetzen Ihr Shop Shopstartseite Zuletzt angesehen Steam-Kuratoren Kürzlich aktualisiert Kostenlos Early Access Demos Virtuelle Realität Unterstützt Steam Controller Café-Spiele auf Steam Nach Genre durchsuchen: Abenteuer Action Gelegenheitsspiele Indie MMO Rennspiele RPG Simulation Sport Strategie Beliebte Tags anzeigen Nach Plattform durchsuchen: Software-Hub Animation & Modellierung Audio-Produktion Bildung Design & Illustration Fotobearbeitung Spieleentwicklung Videoproduktion Web-Publishing Werkzeuge Neuigkeiten Steam Laboratorien Alle Produkte > Neuigkeiten > PC Gamer Elder Scrolls Collection Ganze Beiträge Überschriften Skywind mod trailer shows Morrowind remade in Skyrim Skyrim is a beautifully vast and sweeping game. Also vast: the possibility of its modding potential. The nomadic fans of Morrowind are crossing those rolling plains of creation, as part of their quest to settle within the safety and shelter of this newer game's engine. Their journey started just over a year ago, and now - while still far from the home stretch - they've made great progress. They've even released a trailer showing just how far they've come. Skywind is currently on version 0.91, and, according to its makers, still very much in alpha. "You can move around the world, interact with a few things, but the full content of questing, gameplay and many other various elements are not part of the game yet," they write. "These Alpha releases are more for getting people interested, inspired and up-to-date with development so they can help with the project." Nevertheless, it's a fantastically ambitious project that appears to be progressing nicely. You can download Skywind from the Morroblivion website, stopping only briefly to appreciate how great the word "Morroblivion" is. To play it, you'll need both Skyrim and Morrowind (along with the Tribunal and Bloodmoon expansions) installed on your computer. Thanks, RPS. Mod of the Week: Skyrim Unbound Isn't starting a new character in an RPG the best? Sure, it's great being a high-level badass with an arsenal of weapons and spells and enough loot to choke a dragon. But there's something about starting over from scratch, when every rusty dagger is a priceless treasure and every minor monster is a genuine threat. Let's all start a new character in Skyrim, and let's all use the Skyrim Unbound mod. It makes starting over an adventure in itself. Skyrim Unbound is designed to give you a fresh start to the game. You've played through the original Helgen opener enough, right? You've been the Dragonborn plenty of times. You've slain so many dragons you need to build an extra room on your house just to store their bones. This time, let's skip all that. You can save the world later. For now, let's just get busy living in it. There are tons of places to start your game. Or you can let the mod pick one for you. When you start a new game, you'll see the Skyrim title card, and then a notification to visit the mod configuration menu. There, you can select the options you want to start your game with. You can pick a specific starting point, the place in the world your new character will appear, or just specify the type of area you’d like to start in (city, town, wilderness, inn, even a jail cell). Don't care where you start, or want to be surprised? Leave it on random, and the game will decide. There are several types of characters to choose from: you can be a hunter/explorer, a warrior, a mage, a merchant/traveler, a thief/assassin, and even a beggar. The type of character you pick will determine the type of gear and clothing you begin with. A hunter will have a bow, a mage will have a staff and a couple spells, a warrior will have a starter set of armor and a nice big melee weapon, a merchant will have a fat purse of gold. A beggar, naturally, will have just some ragged clothing and a few coins. None of this modifies your actual stats, just your starting gear, and you'll still get to customize your character's race, gender, and appearance before you begin playing. I picked a thief/assassin. And that is definitely the vibe I am getting. As far as dragons themselves go, you’ve got a number of options. You can turn them off completely, allowing yourself to pretend they have not yet awoken. You can activate just the scripted dragon encounters (which take place at word walls and burial grounds) so you'll still have a few dragons to slay. Or, you can turn on the random encounters as well, so they'll appear in the game as they usually do. You can turn dragon soul absorption off, allowing you to fight and kill dragons without absorbing their souls, as if you were a run-of-the-mill adventurer instead of the fabled Dragonborn. Best of all, you can always adjust your dragon options later, meaning you won’t be married to any particular dragon-related setup. If you do want to become the Dragonborn at some point in your game, just enable the dragons, absorb a dragon soul, and then visit those old guys on the top of the mountain. That’ll kick off the main Skyrim quest. And, until then, no one will accuse you of being the Dragonborn. If you don't want to choose a character class or starting spot, the mod is happy to do it for you. Just launch the game with everything set on random, and see what happens. Once I spawned as a warrior at a campsite. A couple hunters were staring at me as if I just stepped out of the gloom to warm my hands at their fire. Another time, I appeared as a thief inside a fort filled with bandits, as if I'd just snuck in to loot the place. Another character of mine appeared at a tavern, as if he were just another weary traveler looking for a drink before going on his way. It's fun, and it lends itself to role-playing and building a little story for your new character. Who are they? What are they doing here? And, where are they going next? Normally I'd pick the lock, but this time I'm just a lowly merchant. I know: I'll sleep my way out! One time I got a merchant character who started in a jail cell. Perhaps he'd been doing some shady dealings. Maybe he was more of a con man, a thief in merchant's clothing. Boom. I've already got a story for him. Another time, I appeared as as an assassin in the town of Rorikstead. I could only assume I was there to murder one of the residents. Boom. Story. Another time, I spawned near a Forsworn settlement near Morthal, and they immediately attacked. Now my character is committed to wiping out the Forsworn. Whoops, no, he's dead. But if he hadn't died, he'd totally have a story! No need to create a back-story for this fellow. The Forsworn saw to that. Skyrim Unbound is a great way to kick off a new adventure. (I only wish I'd had it back when I wrote The Elder Strolls.) Leave the Dragonborn stuff aside for the moment, roll up a new character, and see where they land. It won't be long before you've created a new story and are living a new life. Who is that mysterious Argonian at the bar? Somebody? Nobody? I guess it could be anybody. Installation: Two choices here. You can subscribe to it through the Steam Workshop. When you start a new game, you'll be presented with a series of prompts on the type of character you want, where you'd like to be placed in the world, and so on. To get the most out of this mod, however, you’ll also want to subscribe to SkyUI, which means also installing and launching the game with the Skyrim Script Extender (long-ish video on how to install and launch the game with SKSE here). This will allow you to configure the mod through the menu screen and change your dragon-related options later in the game. This is how I used the mod for this column, and I definitely recommend using it alongside SkyUI and SKSE. 1. Sep. 2013 Mod of the Week: Undeath, for Skyrim Necromancy has a bad rap in Skyrim, which is a little weird. With the mountains of corpses the Dragonborn leaves in his wake, you’d think bringing a few of them back from the dead wouldn’t be such a big deal. Undeath, created by modder Antioch08, tasks you with snuffing out a teeming cabal of necromancers... but it also gives you the option of continuing their evil work, learning their dark secrets, and performing a ritual to transform yourself into a powerful Lich capable of commanding an army of the undead. Which path did I choose? Here's a hint. That image above? That's me. (A couple notes up front: your character needs to be level thirty or above to play this mod, and it uses assets from the official Dawnguard and Dragonborn DLC, so you’ll need both of those. You're also going to need your enchanting skill maxed out, and you should have almost 300 Magicka to really enjoy the fruits of this mod.) Slaughtering a bunch of innocents? But... that's MY trademark move. The mod begins with a request to investigate a missing (dead) convoy of Vigilants of Stendarr (those goodie-goodies who stroll around in robes looking for evil-doers). After searching bodies at the scene of the ambush, I discover one of the attackers was kind enough to carry his orders with him, nicely written down on paper, just as you'd expect from a super-secret cabal determined to hide their existence from the world at large. This clue leads me to a secluded tower, where one particular necromancer has left a few journals detailing his plans to unlock a dark ritual that will allow him to become a powerful Lich. He’s also sent some followers on several missions across Skyrim to collect important objects he’ll need to complete the ritual. Since they already dug him up... couldn't hurt to open the coffin for a little peek. Right? After tracking down one of these groups, who are digging up a dead priest with the intent on cutting out his heart, the mod gives me a choice. I can rebury the priest and go on with my mission to extinguish this evil plot, which seems like the sensible thing to do. OR. I can, y'know, finish digging up the priest and cut out his heart and stick it in my pocket, thus completing the necromancers mission, only without the necromancers, because I just killed them. I take the heart. Why not? The hard work is already done, and the guy is already dead, and I've been meaning to dabble in necromancy anyway. A human skull in the pot, throw in a couple mushrooms... baby, you've got a stew goin'! After tracking down and killing another group of acolytes, I find that they were brewing a weird potion up top of a hill. They’ve done most of the work already, and the recipe is nearby as well. Again, I'm given the option to dump their cauldron on the ground, putting an end to this evil business! But, I hate to see a meal go to waste, and most of the ingredients are close by... what the heck! Soup's on! The commute is a bitch, but the necromancers must pay very little rent out here. Eventually, I've killed all the necromancer dweebs and completed their tasks for them, because they're all to busy being killed by me to do it themselves. Now that I've got all their leader's precious belongings, it only stands to reckon that I hunt him down and kill him too, thus ending his evil plot. And beginning mine. Did I come at a bad time? I find the leader deep underground in a massive network of ruins and tunnels, and mow my way through his remaining assistants and skeletons before hacking him to death. If I were interested in putting an end to his plans, I guess the mod would be over right then and there. However, I’m not looking to just kill a bunch of hooded weirdoes for the fun of it. Imma be a Lich! Becoming a Lich is not exactly easy, however. The head necromancer is dead, but I need to figure out exactly what he was doing before I can continue his work. I read his notes and scour the massive dungeon, eventually locating some hidden items and placing them in the right spots. Then, after finding a massive Black Book, I'm whisked away to the weird library dimension of Apocrypha. This is not a toilet. I won’t go into details, but the library dimension kind of sucks (it kind of sucked in the Dragonborn DLC as well). You have to run around with a torch (the darkness physically hurts you) getting attacked by the same monster over and over and looking for switches to open gates so you can collect a bunch of items to place in the right spots. This takes roughly forever, but eventually, I've completed the quest and I'm whisked back to the real world. Starting to think necromancy might be a little evil or something. Once I’m back in Tamriel, there's more work to be done before I can Lich-out all over everyone. I require a few more items and a secluded spot to perform the forbidden ritual. As it happens, a shadowy merchant called The Broker has been watching me hack my way to the top of the necromancy ladder, and sends me a note, via courier, inviting me to check out her ghoulish shop, where I can purchase most of what I need, including the deed to a nice underground lair where I can transform with some privacy. More work follows, of the gathering kind, then the crafting kind, then the enchanting kind, and finally, after closely following the intricate instructions, I glug an evil potion of my own making and drop stone dead on the floor. Whoops! Missed a step. A side-effect of becoming undead is becoming dead. I reread everything, try again, and this time it pays off. I'm a Lich! Houston, we have Lich-Off. Returning to the surface in human form, I step into Solitude, ready to unleash my powerful evil upon the city. I transform into a Lich, hovering above the ground, bathed in eldritch magic. All will tremble at my hideous shade! All will die at my bony hand! All will be raised as my willing zombie servants! And then a courier walks up and tells me he's got a delivery for me. Dude. DUDE. C'mon. Tryin' to be an evil skeleton ghost monster and you're FUCKING RUINING IT. Well. Not quite the dramatic display of unspeakable evil I spent the last four or five hours unlocking. Still, after the courier wanders off, completely nonplussed at delivering a telegram to a TERRIFYING HOVERING LICH, I'm free to (somewhat sheepishly) cast spells, terrorize the locals, blast them with magic, and raise those who have fallen to fight for me. Except for the damn Apocrypha level, this mod is pretty great (and quite challenging). There's also apparently a ton of extra content I didn't even get to. It's also the most reading-intensive mod I've played, and knowing what to do and how to do it is dependent on the careful reading of journals and books. Pick up all the new books and journals you find! Read them! Take them with you! It's the only way you'll become a Lich like me. Installation: Download the mod here. I used the Nexus Mod Manager to install it, and you should too, because while there's a manual download, I don't see any manual installation instructions anywhere. This mod also doesn't really hold your hand except in the early quests, so if you get stuck, read the FAQ contained on this page. Elder Scrolls Online blog details the creation of the new flame atronach A new post on the Elder Scrolls Online blog offers a look at the creation of everyone’s favorite flaming daedra, the flame atronach. The ESO dev team has been focusing on lots of flickering flame effects and suitably creepy demonic sound effects to bring the creatures to life. “Sound effects are critical for any creature—especially for one with so many kinds of movements and attacks,” the post reads. “Most of us are familiar with the kinds of sounds fire can make, but how do we create believable audio for a creature of animate, magical flame? Our Sound Designers get a good look at creatures and their animations before they get to work to get an idea of the kinds of sounds they’ll need to create. For the flame atronach, they imagined how its various attacks would sound right away. Utilizing huge sound libraries, they found sounds for swinging torches, campfires, and even an actual geyser.” The video shows off a lot of details in a short time. There’s enchanted weapons, dual-wielding, a first-person perspective and dodging attacks with combat rolls. There’s also the inevitable death that comes when you charge face-first into a group of flame atronachs. And with a fire damage weapon? Come on, guy, it’s like you’re not even trying. Elder Scrolls Online is shaping up quickly, aiming for an early 2014 launch. Check out Chris's impression from his hands-on time back in May. Mod of the Week: Gifts of the Outsider, for Skyrim Perry recently told us about a mod called Gifts of the Outsider that imports the magic powers from Dishonored into Skyrim: Blink, Possession, Bend Time, Devouring Swarm, Wind Blast, and Void Gaze. I decided to the use the mod not just for its powers, but also to reenact the plot of Dishonored in Skyrim: the tale of an honorable man seeking revenge after being framed for a crime he didn’t commit. It’ll be just like Dishonored, only in Skyrim, and starring a furry woman with a tail. Just call me Khorvo. Don’t worry, this will be supremely light on Dishonored spoilers, I'll cover a few of the activities you perform during the Dishonored campaign, Skyrim style. Let’s get started. What’s the first thing you do in Dishonored? Play Hide-and-Seek with a Child This is how REAL assassins train. Next: hopscotch. I find some kids running around in Solitude, but they don’t want to play hide-and-seek, so we play tag instead. Minette Vinius and I chase each other around, forming a close personal bond that will surely keep me motivated in the dark days to come. I catch her and tag her and then I fast-travel to Whiterun so she’ll never be able to catch me and she'll be “It” forever. Go To Prison for a Crime I Didn’t Commit In Whiterun, I use a Frenzy spell on some guy standing around in the city. He goes nuts and starts attacking anyone nearby. The guards run over and arrest me while he is killed in the background. I’m shocked and outraged. I didn’t kill anyone! It was all him! You won’t get away with this! I will have my revenge! Looks like I’ve been... DISHONORED! Can you believe the crime around here, officer? Wait, what did I do? Escape from Prison Not a problem! Pulling a lockpick out of my butt, I open the cell door, sneak through the prison, collect my gear, and slip back out into the streets. You’ll all pay for what you’ve done, I silently vow. All of you. It’s time to reclaim my honor. But how? Meet the Outsider Since I’m a wanted woman in Whiterun, I need to get away to plot my revenge. I head out to an abandoned house west of Riften, where I find a book and read it. I appear in Limbo, where everything is floaty and slanty, and meet The Outsider. He gives me the Blink power, which lets me teleport short distances. He tells me there are other powers I can collect by visiting his other shrines. Could these powers be the key to destroying those who wronged me? I promise I'll only use Blink for good or for revenge or for fun. Assassinate an Important Religious Figure There are plenty of religious types in Skyrim, but when I think about one I’d like to assassinate, a particular zealot immediately comes to mind: Heimskr, the Nord Priest of Talos. Even if you don’t know his name, you know him: he’s the dude who stands in the middle of Whiterun and screeches incessantly about Talos, all day, every day. Oh, and is it a coincidence that the spot he stands in is just yards from where I was arrested for my “crime?” Not a chance. His death will mark the beginning of my quest to dis-dishonor myself. This looks cool but I'm actually sliding off the statue for the 8th time. I creep through Whiterun, using my new Blink spell. It’s neat, it really does zip you around, even on top of buildings, though I tend to slowly slide off. I blink onto the statue behind Heimskr, then to the ground behind him, and then I stab him in the back. I blink away onto a rooftop and the guards look around, confused, having no idea where I went. Actually, they don’t seem confused at all. They immediately shoot me with a bunch of arrows. I run away, but only because I'm in a hurry to reclaim my honor. Now to just fold up my sword and OWW IT’S NOT A FOLD-UP SWORD Now that Heimskr is dead, it’s time to find another Outsider shrine, collect a new power, and choose a new target. In the sewers under Riften, I find the shrine, caress the skull, and acquire the Devouring Swarm rune. Assassinate Two People in a Brothel Haelga’s Bunkhouse in Riften isn’t a brothel, but it sort of sounds like it could be. You know there are at least a few inappropriate back-rubs going on in there. I summon up a swarm of rats, and try to kill two people with them. The perfect crime. Good luck trying to arrest swarm of rats, coppers! Okay, the rats sort of killed everyone in the entire building. Those rats are NOT messing around. Having killed a room full of people with rats, a feeling seeps into my heart. I haven’t felt it in a long time, not since earlier today, but I know what that feeling is. It’s honor, slowly returning to me. I collect the Possession rune near the Dark Brotherhood Sanctuary, and I’m on to my next mission. Abduct a Doctor on a Bridge The first step goes well: I head to Dragon Bridge. I run into a bit of a snag here, though, as there do not appear to be any doctors out for a stroll across Dragon Bridge today. For a lesser assassin, that would be a problem, but I’m clever enough to find the owner of a lumber mill sitting nearby. A lumberjack is sort of like a doctor for trees, if doctors killed all of their patients and cut them into pieces, right? (The answer is: right.) He’s not on the bridge, but that can remedied with my new Possession spell. I leap into his mind and run him onto the bridge, where I pop out of the back of his head. Revenge is a dish best served inside an innocent lumberjack’s head. Having gotten him onto to the bridge, it’s time to abduct him off the bridge, which means possessing him again. I steer him off the other side of the bridge and into the wilderness. Abduction accomplished! I figure I’ll just keep possessing him and repossessing him and making him run so far away he’ll never find his way back, thus completing the abduction, but thirty seconds later we run into a bear and the bear kills him. Looks like I got out of this dude’s head just in time. I’ve just used magic to get a lumber mill owner murdered by a bear. I’m one step closer to regaining my honor. I visit another shrine and collect the Wind Blast rune. Kill a Fancy Woman at a Fancy Party There actually is a dinner party quest in Skyrim, but I’ve already completed it, so I need to find another fancy lady at a fancy place and kill her, fancy style. For honor. I know! The Blue Palace at Solitude. It’s the fanciest place I can think of. Making sure to avoid Minette Vinius (I don’t want to get tagged “It” again!) I run through Solitude and enter The Blue Palace, which is run by Elisif The Fair, a fancy woman. I creep into the throne room, where there are some people hanging around. Looks like a party to me. Sorry I didn’t bring any WINE, I growl from the shadows, but I did bring some WIND! Get it? Wine. Wind. Almost the same word. And so forth. They don’t seem to get my wine/wind joke, probably because they are being slammed all over the room by magic wind. It’s a great spell: it’s like the Unrelenting Force shout, only you can hold down the button to keep it on, sending everyone flying all over the place until your Magicka is drained. After blowing everyone around the palace for a while, I head to the nearby mountains to collect the Bend Time rune. It’s time to kill the most important person in Skyrim. It’s Time to Kill The Most Important Person In Skyrim I figure the Jarl of Whiterun is the most important person in Skyrim, except for maybe me. I sneak into his chambers in the dead of night, slipping past a couple guards after slowing down time. It doesn’t quite work how I want: I was perfectly hidden from them until I cast the spell, which made them aware of me. The spell slows down time just fine, though, and even having seen me, the guards don’t seem to care that I’m creeping around near the Jarl’s bedroom casting time-bending spells in the dead of night. You can’t really tell, but he is dying in slow motion. I can vouch for that. The Jarl has an honorable, slow-motion death as I hack at his sleeping body. The guards run over to arrest me, and I try telling them that I’d rather die than go to prison, anticipating a fun Blink-filled escape from Whiterun. Unfortunately, Skyrim does that thing where it doesn’t select the line of dialogue I’m pointing at, so I accidentally bribe the guards and they peacefully escort me to the front door. Oh well. Skip A Big Part of Dishonored’s Story To Avoid Spoilers My easiest mission yet! I collect the final rune, Void Gaze, so I guess we’re ready for the big finale: Kill Someone At a Lighthouse Back in Solitude, I run around the lighthouse long enough discover there’s no one important in the lighthouse or on top of the lighthouse. There’s only Ma’zaka, the lighthouse keeper, but he’s downstairs in his little chambers. I sneak in, and use Void Gaze, which works like Detect Life, letting you see people through walls. I could possess him, run him up to the top of the lighthouse, and Wind Blast him off, but when you’re possessing someone they can’t open doors, so I have no way to get him out of his room. If I want to kill him, I’ll have to kill him right here. Yep. There he is. This isn’t quite the grand ending from Dishonored, though. I know that killing people with rats and blasting a fancy woman into her own ceiling and getting a lumberjack bear-mauled were all necessary -- absolutely necessary -- to regain my honor. But killing Ma’zaka, a humble, harmless lighthouse keeper in his own bedroom to end the story... it would just be complete anti-climax, wouldn’t it? Yep. It was a complete anti-climax. Lesson learned: if you want Dishonored’s story, go play Dishonored. If you want to have fun with Dishonored’s powers in Skyrim, though, this mod works great. Installation: I installed this with the Nexus Mod Manager, but the mod looks as if it's just a single bsa and esp file. So, if you're doing it manually, just download the files and plop 'em in your Skyrim data folder (Steam > steamapps > common > skyrim > Data). No magic required. Looking for more Skyrim mods? We recently updated out grand list of the best 50 for your perusal. The Elder Scrolls Anthology bundles every mudcrab, dragon, and potato-faced human The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion® Game of the Year Edition At QuakeCon last night, Bethesda announced The Elder Scrolls Anthology, a special edition retail release containing every TES game, expansion and DLC pack. That's a hell of a lot of prison escapes, grand adventure, and stilted voice acting being packed into a single box. But if you're not tempted by an attractive re-release of games you likely already own, the developer is also packaging the ultimate in PC gaming physical rewards: five maps, covering Tamriel, Iliac Bay, Morrowind, Cyrodiil and Skyrim. The Elder Scrolls Arena The Elder Scrolls III DLC: Tribunal The Elder Scrolls III DLC: Bloodmoon The Elder Scrolls IV DLC: Knights of the Nine The Elder Scrolls IV DLC: Shivering Isles The Elder Scrolls V DLC: Dawnguard The Elder Scrolls V DLC: Hearthfire The Elder Scrolls V DLC: Dragonborn Given Bethesda's tendency to bundle the official Oblivion add-ons onto retail discs, it's a likely bet that they'll be included as well. After all, it's not much of an anthology if it doesn't include Horse Armour. It's a lovely looking artefact for fans of the series, but if you just want the games, there are cheaper options. With Bethesda running Steam sales this weekend in celebration of QuakeCon, expect to see Morrowind, Oblivion and Skyrim all get heavy discounts at some point. As for Arena and Daggerfall, both have been released as free downloads directly from Bethesda. The Elder Scrolls Anthology will release September 13th in Europe, and September 10th in North America. It will cost £49.99 / $79.99 / €59.99 / $89.99AUD Thanks, IGN. Skyrim mod gallery: flying boats, fresh landscapes and flaming horses Behind Falskaar, a massive new Skyrim mod, and the 19-year-old who spent a year building it We love Skyrim mods. A new, noteworthy one for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Falskaar, was released over the weekend, and it is quite a doozy. Falskaar adds almost 25 hours of content, a land mass a third the size of the original game, new characters, new voices, and dozens of quests. As impressive as it is, though, it’s nowhere near as impressive as the creative force behind it: Alexander J. Velicky, a 19-year-old gunning for a job with Bethesda with his first try at modding Skyrim. “I organized everyone involved, but the voice actors themselves recorded all the dialogue and submitted it to me,” Velicky told me. Though over 100 people contributed in some way, including composing an original soundtrack, Velicky took their contributions and plugged them into Falskaar himself. “I had some people help me out with a few models and textures, someone wrote a book or two for me... But otherwise all content was implemented, written and developed by me.” So how does a 19-year-old take the helm of a creative project of this size? Velicky wants a job. He graduated from high school over a year ago, and instead of finding a design school, he turned Bethesda’s Creation Kit into his classroom, spending 2,000 hours over the last year building Falskaar. “ was incredibly supportive and allowed me to live here, paying for living expenses and charging no rent,” Velicky says. “I was able to not go to school and not have a day job. Meaning, more or less, that Falskaar was my day job.” The mod is fully voice-acted by 29 voice actors playing 54 characters (Velicky held auditions), and the quality is much higher than most community-made content. “I'm still kind of shocked at some of the talent I got on the project... and every single one of them surpassed my expectations by leaps and bounds.” A massive dungeon, “Watervine Chasm,” may be Falskaar’s crowning achievement. It took Velicky three weeks to build and players report it takes an hour or two to complete. The community response has been overwhelmingly positive. “Falskaar isn't perfect,” Velicky says. “I'm not an expert who's been crafting game experiences for the last 20 years, so I certainly still have a lot to learn, and I always will. I'm always looking to learn and improve, and Falskaar was a huge chance for me to do this.” According to Velicky, Bethesda is aware that he’s out there, and he isn’t shy about putting his goals right out on the table. “The best way to show Bethesda Game Studios that I want a job there and should be hired is to create content that meets the standards of their incredible development team.” Falskaar is available now on Skyrim Nexus, and I encourage you to check it out. Have a gander at our list of the 25 Best Skyrim Mods, too. Elder Scrolls Online’s dungeons will be instanced, difficult settings for group play Elder Scrolls fans are getting really worried about next year’s Elder Scrolls Online, for fear that it will simply be a World of Warcraft clone with a thin flavor of Tamriel sprinkled on top. A blog post on ESO’s website describes the innerworkings of the game’s instanced group-based dungeons, and what it reveals plays a little bit to each side of that argument. In the post, developers explain that enemies in the same room will operate on a “pack mentality” basis, where an attack on any one of them alerts all of the others. Tanking members of a dungeon group will base their strategy off the knowledge that “By default, a pack of monsters spreads out, and each enemy chooses a target,” as the post explains. “Player actions can change their targets to some extent. For example, taunt abilities force an enemy to attack you for a fixed duration.” This is worryingly standard MMO construction, as are the enumerated differences between the three members of the Tank/Healer/DPS holy trinity. The tank needs to control the fight by keeping enemies focused on him; the DPS needs to cause damage without bringing too many enemies into the scrap at once; the healer needs to keep an eye on everyone’s health bars. So far, so 2005. But lo! A ray of hopeful sunshine appears! ESO has always promised the open-ended, multiclass play that we love, where an Orc with a penchant for dual-wielding battle axes can also deploy the gentle caress of healing magic. In ESO, skill bars will change depending on the weapons equipped, allowing a single character to switch between various roles depending on their current equipment. “Let’s say your group’s healer goes down during a boss battle... You swap your two-handed sword out right in the middle of combat for a restoration staff, which activates your second hotbar (where you’ve cleverly slotted some healing abilities). Now, you can keep the party going.” Is this enough to dramatically mix up the rote MMO formula? Is this twist just enough to claim that their game is different, but without actually changing the fundamentals? I suspect that fans on either side of the debate will find evidence for their side. Elder Scrolls Online is slated for a 2014 release. Mod of the Week: Helgen Reborn, for Skyrim Welcome back to the town of Helgen! Last seen at the beginning of Skyrim being curb-stomped into splinters by the Nordic God of Destruction, Helgen has since remained a shattered ruin filled with bandit jerks... until now. Helgen Reborn invites you to play a key role in transforming Helgen into a functioning town once more. You'll crisscross Skyrim on a sprawling adventure that includes recruiting a team of oddball soldiers, busting up a human-trafficking ring, fighting to the death in a gladiator pit, and moving into a new home with perhaps the coolest basement you've ever seen. The mod begins in Whiterun where I meet a grubby fellow named Patsy, who actually looks quite a bit like Patsy from Monty Python and the Holy Grail (the first of several movie references in the mod). Patsy sends me to find Marcus, a former Imperial soldier, who sends me to find Val, his former comrade in arms, who is holed up in the remains of Helgen pretending to be part of a bandit crew. As Dragonborn, savior of Skyrim, prophesied and sung of in songs, I find it a little rude for these guys to assume I have nothing better to do with my time than play postman, carrying messages between them all day. (Actually, I do have nothing better to do with my time, but these guys don't know that.) Oh, you are NOT getting your security deposit back. Eventually, the two former old chums reunite at Helgen and start making plans for the future. Val is looking for revenge against the people who killed his family, and Marcus wants to rebuild Helgen, a town he visited often in his youth and thus has fond feelsies for. I get straight to work for the both of them. First up, Val needs me to spring one of his men, who is being held in a Thalmor prison. I come up with a great plan: kill all the Thalmor with an axe. But wait! Val has an even better plan: dress me up as an Imperial and send me in with a forged prison transfer order. YES! This is just like 90% of World War II movies, where someone G.I. has to dress up in a Nazi uniform to bluff his way into a compound behind enemy lines. Those plans always go well, right? Me am Imperial. Not famous Dragonborn Orc. Me... not lie about thing like that. My Imperial uniform gets me in the door, but Val's plan hits a slight snag because my Orc, who mainly communicates with others via two-handed axe blows, has not really bothered putting skill points into Speechcraft at any point ever in his entire life. After just a few words with the Thalmor officers, they shrewdly decide this hulking brute in front of them is not actually part of an Imperial envoy transferring a prisoner to the embassy. The ruse fails, and I have to go with my original plan of AXE AXE AXE. Guten tag. Zigaretten? Oh, screw it. YAGGGGGGH Having messily rescued Val's scout, I turn to Marcus and the issue of restoring Helgen. The first thing he needs are guards to protect the town from bandits and other threats while it's being rebuilt, and he gives me the choice of asking the Stormcloaks for help, or assembling a patchwork force of various loners and oddballs from all over Skyrim. Well, that's a hell of an easy choice. Finding a ragtag crew of misfits and shaping them into an effective team? That's an 80's movie just waiting for some montage music. I scour the map, visiting taverns all over Skyrim to put together Helgen's new town watch. I recruit a shrimpy Nord who wants to prove himself, a somber Khajiit who is mourning the death of his dog, a dope named Kindrick whose only combat experience was once seeing (and steering clear of) a single mudcrab, an Argonian who... actually, I can't remember what his deal was. There's also a brother and sister who are not that interesting because they seem like they'd be excellent choices, and I'm more about the weirdos. We've got till the end of summer to turn this motley crew of goofballs into a winning softball team. One by one, I take them out on minor quests to test their nerve and their steel, or at least to let them watch while I rush through caves ahead of them and kill everything as fast as I can. Eventually, they all prove their worth, or at least they don't die. Back in town, they all get matching uniforms and shields bearing the new, independent crest of Helgen. I gotta say, seeing my collection of misfits lined up in spiffy matching armor is a pretty cool moment. Now those stuck-up rich kids from the Thalmor camp don't stand a chance! Marcus, grateful for my help, gives me a tower in Helgen. From the outside, it doesn't look like much, but the inside is nicely furnished. There's a massive lower level with all the crafting and enchanting accoutrements, not to mention a sprawling area with mannequins for armor and display cases for weaponry. But that ain't NOTHIN'. The coolest feature of this new home, by far, is the spacious cavern under the tower. Patsy, it seems, has a talent for taxidermy. In related news, I kill a lot of monsters and take pieces of their corpses. Do you see what I'm getting at? Forget hanging up a couple axes on a rack or putting armor on a dummy: the cavern is where you can display your REAL trophies. This is my basement. Correction: this is one CORNER of my basement. Seriously, get this mod. Aside from being able to stock your basement with stuffed, posed monsters like dragons, giants, and mammoths, there are other displays that appear based on your progress in Skyrim itself. For instance, I have a werewolf statue down there, because I became a werewolf during one of Skyrim's quests, and there are all sorts of other trophies and treasures in the cavern based on what I've accomplished. I think this is the coolest home I've seen in a Skyrim mod yet. With my awesome new home (that I never want to leave), Helgen's spiffy new armed guards, and the town now noisy with the hustle and bustle of workers and new citizens, it would seem like your job here is done. But this is Skyrim, an odd and violent land, so issues with a late lumber delivery naturally wind up with me fighting to the death under the name "Skull Crusher" in a gladiator pit called Fight Cave while onlookers chant "Two warriors enter! One warrior leaves!" It's Skyrim, man. You never know where your day is going to take you. Welcome to Fight Cave. You are not how many septims you have in the bank. You are not your enchanted ebony armor. Fight Cave is reminiscent of the Imperial City Arena in Oblivion. You work your way up in a series of bouts against tougher and tougher opponents, while gamblers watch and (sort of) cheer. Once you've become champion, which somehow solves the delay in the lumber delivery, you're back to helping Val with his deal, which turns out to be busting up a human-trafficking ring. Of course! Using my dragon to punish slavers. Wonder where I got that idea from? Despite the mod's guide urging you to SAVE SAVE SAVE YOUR GAME, I only had one crash, and one issue with a quest that required me to reload my most recent autosave. So, it's actually pretty darn stable, all things considered. Also, it's pretty great. There's a bunch of lore related to the mod in the form of books and conversations. There is an impressive amount of original voice work, and nearly all of it is very well done, with the exception for the guy who sounds like someone doing an Arnold Schwarzenegger impression (on the plus side, it's a very good impression). If we don't rebuild, then the dragons have won. Plus, when you're done, you'll get to witness Helgen being rebuilt into a real town with an inn, shops, and all sorts of original characters walking around. My guess is that this mod took me about five or six hours to play, and apart from one embarrassingly regrettable scene with a moaning prostitute (though at least it contains a reference to Blazing Saddles), is really well thought out and impressively put together. Installation: You can easily download and install the mod using the Nexus Mod Manager (I didn't see it on Steam Workshop, unfortunately), though check the mod's FAQ for conflicts with other mods (there seem to be a lot). I didn't see instructions for a manual install, but there's just single .bsa file and a single .esp file in the download, so I'm guessing you just drop them in your Skyrim Data folder, and tick the Data Files checkbox when you launch the game. 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__label__cc	0.631208	0.368792	Death Penalty Reversed Over Black Juror Exclusion October 26, 2015 pammaclean Criminal, US Court of Appeals Leave a comment Reversal of the 1989 double murder conviction and death sentence in the killing of a Chico doctor and his wife has been upheld based on the prosecutor’s exclusion of the only African-American in the jury pool. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in a 2-1 vote Monday, affirmed a decision that reversed the death sentence of Steven Crittenden for the 1987 stabbing deaths of 67-year-old Dr. William Chiapella and his 66-year-old wife, Katherine. The majority opinion, by Judge Raymond Fisher, held that the trial judge was not clearly wrong in finding the prosecutor’s exclusion on the single black juror in a pool of 60 potential jurors was racially motivated. Crittenden, who is black, had challenged the jury selection, first to the California Supreme Court, which rejected his claim. The prosecution challenged he racial assumption, pointing to the black jurors response to a jury questionnaire about the death penalty in which she said she didn’t want to see anyone put to death but could set aside her personal feelings. The prosecutor argued she was opposed to the death penalty and that was sufficient cause to exclude her. In a federal habeas appeal challenging the constitutionally of his conviction based on jury selection, a federal judge in Sacramento reversed his conviction in 2013. The appeals court upheld the ruling. In dissent, Judge Margaret McKeown said she would have deferred to the state trial court’s initial determination that the elimination of the potential black juror was not race-based. Based on the majority holding, Crittenden is entitled to a new trial. Fisher was joined by Judge Marsha Berzon in the majority. Case: Crittenden v. Chappell, No. 13-17327 9th Circuitdeath penaltyjurorracial bias Previous Post: Last Republican Federal Judge in San Francisco Retires Next Post: ‘Shrimp Boy’ Chow Avoids Death Penalty	cc/2019-30/en_middle_0059.json.gz/line1788
__label__wiki	0.944954	0.944954	Jets fire GM Mike Maccagnan; coach Adam Gase acting GM \| TribLIVE.com Jets fire GM Mike Maccagnan; coach Adam Gase acting GM New York Jets head coach Adam Gase speaks during an NFL football news conference Friday, May 10, 2019, in Florham Park, N.J. NEW YORK — Mike Maccagnan helped lead the Jets’ coaching search this offseason, spent big money in free agency and oversaw the team’s draft. Now, stunningly, he’s out as New York’s general manager. Team chairman and CEO Christopher Johnson announced the decision to fire Maccagnan in a statement posted Wednesday on the team’s Twitter account. Coach Adam Gase will serve as the acting general manager in Maccagnan’s place while the Jets search for a replacement. “This morning, I informed Mike that he was being relieved of his duties as general manager of the team, effective immediately,” Johnson said in the statement. “Mike helped to execute the strategic vision of the organization during the last four seasons and especially the past few months. However, I came to the decision to make a change after much thought and a careful assessment of what would be in the best long-term interests of the New York Jets.” The timing is particularly strange because Maccagnan ran the Jets’ draft less than three weeks ago, including taking defensive tackle Quinnen Williams with the No. 3 overall pick. There were some rumors, however, that there was tension between Maccagnan and Gase — which both denied. Gase was irritated by the suggestion there were problems between the two when asked about the reports, saying last Friday: “I don’t know who decides to put that stuff out there. It kind of (expletive) me off a little bit. We have discussions on everything.” ESPN reported that Brian Heimerdinger, the Jets’ vice president of player personnel, was also fired as part of the team’s front office shake-up. Maccagnan, who was hired as GM in 2015, was not relieved of his duties this past offseason when coach Todd Bowles was fired — leading many to assume that Maccagnan’s job was not in jeopardy. He was fully involved in the coaching search and hiring Gase to replace Bowles. Maccagnan was also active in free agency in March, spending more than $125 million to land the likes of running back Le’Veon Bell, linebacker C.J. Mosley and wide receiver Jamison Crowder. He also acquired left guard Kelechi Osemele from Oakland in a trade. The Jets also have what they believe is a franchise quarterback in place in Sam Darnold, who was the third overall pick in last year’s draft after Maccagnan engineered a deal with Indianapolis to move up from the No. 6 spot. Safety Jamal Adams and defensive lineman Leonard Williams are also recent draft picks by Maccagnan who have become building blocks for the defense. But Maccagnan’s draft history since coming to New York is otherwise shaky, at best. Categories: Sports \| NFL More NFL Stories First Call: Antonio Brown mad at Madden video game; competitive-eating scandal Tim Benz, Mark Madden discuss Pirates disaster vs. Cubs, Penguins chemistry, NFL schedule NFL opens academy in London, Steelers’ JuJu Smith-Schuster helps First Call: Redskins’ Josh Norman leaps over bull; Jagr trade anniversary; stealing 1st base Former NFL lineman Albert Haynesworth hospitalized, ‘in dire need of a kidney’	cc/2019-30/en_middle_0059.json.gz/line1789
__label__wiki	0.54011	0.54011	We dug deep into the vault to find buried releases, fan favorites and other Tromazing greatness you may have missed. Sign up for new TROMA programming every month with instant streaming access wherever you go. Troma NOW Return To Return To Nuke 'Em High A.K.A. VOL. 2 Director: Lloyd Kaufman Stars: Asta Paredes, Catherine Corcoran, Zac Amico Following the events of the previous film, (Return To Nuke 'Em High VOL.1) a lesbian couple is determined to eliminate the most corrupt, evil forces of Tromaville and the world. For special features, including interviews, commentary tracks and a feature-length behind the scenes documentary, see the double-disc Blu-ray set! Coming soon, from Troma, of course! Rent $4.99 Buy $13.99 Watch Trailer Share For special features, including interviews, commentary tracks and a feature-length behind the scenes documentary, s...	cc/2019-30/en_middle_0059.json.gz/line1794
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__label__wiki	0.532871	0.532871	Cell 22.3 Posted on May 9, 2013 by wildbow The door slammed shut as the last of the heroes departed. They joined the PRT uniforms and Wards who had gathered just in front of the elevator, leaving me and my lawyer to talk in private. It should have been quieter, but things got more disruptive. The moment the door was shut, a handful of seconds passed, and then everyone started talking. Mr. Calle saying something to me, Director Tagg talking to his deputy and Miss Militia, Clockblocker talking with his teammates. “This is more or less what we expected…” Mr. Calle was saying. “Call him. And let me know when he arrives.” Director Tagg, talking about my dad. “She wanted to defect,” Clockblocker told the waiting Wards. “Join Defiant and Dragon, go hunt the Slaughterhouse Nine…” “You created pressure with the deadline, he’s trying to turn it around on you…” Mr. Calle said. “I know he’s trying to turn it around on me,” I said. I slid forward until I was sitting on the very edge of the chair, my elbows on the table, forehead resting against my hands. “I didn’t think he’d be this stupid, and I kind of hoped someone would speak up, give a little momentum to what I was proposing.” “People are stupid,” Mr. Calle said. “The question is how we can use that. If we-” Some heroes simultaneously began to voice their thoughts, to the point that I failed to take any of it in. It was too much. Too much input, all together. I couldn’t track it all. I shut my eyes. “Do me a favor?” “You’re the client.” “Five minutes,” I said. “Five minutes to think, with some quiet.” “Would pen scratches bother you?” Mr. Calle didn’t reply to that. Instead, he started writing on a pad of yellow, lined paper, apparently unconcerned that I’d just brushed him off. “…a hot button for her,” Mrs. Yamada was telling the Director. “It’s a pattern, with the timeline we established. Something happens to her father, and she escalates.” “Yes,” the Director replied. “But let’s not talk about that here. Not while she could be listening. We give Kid Win’s drones a chance to check us over before talking about any of that…” “Hunting the Slaughterhouse Nine?” Vista was asking. The Wards were lagging a short distance behind the adult members of the PRT and Protectorate. “Yeah. As in, step down from her position here, stop the guys who are supposed to end the world,” Clockblocker said. “She didn’t kill any, did she?” Kid Win asked. “Grue supposedly killed Burnscar, Piggot killed Crawler and Mannequin, they killed Cherish themselves, basically, Vista finished off Shatterbird after things caved in on them at the Echidna fight… no, Skitter didn’t kill any, I don’t think. She was there, though. Have to give her credit, she made a difference in that last fight with Mannequin and Crawler.” “Which doesn’t matter,” Tagg said. He’d overheard, it seemed, and stopped at the open elevator door. “Because she also wanted us to condone criminal activity in this city. Think about what that really means. Your careers would be dead in the water once people caught on to the fact that you weren’t going after the real threats. You’d be known for being corrupt. Flechette’s actions threaten to taint this organization for some time to come..” “Wait, wait,” Kid Win said, “Flechette?” “We’re telling them?” Clockblocker asked. “It’s confirmed? It’s not a trick?” “It’s not Regent,” Miss Militia said. “The timing doesn’t fit. No, it doesn’t look like it’s a trick. She sent us an email and the details include only things she knows. It feels right.” “What happened?” Crucible asked. “Flechette is stepping down from the Wards program. She is going to be assisting the Undersiders in the future, helping Parian,” Miss Militia said. “No!” Vista said, raising her voice. “No! She became a villain? What… what the hell!?” “Vista,” Clockblocker said. “She was in love.” “She was still one of us. Did you do something?” I wasn’t sure who she was talking to, until Tagg responded, “No. We didn’t do a thing to her. Everyone that’s been in Brockton Bay over the past weeks and months has dealt with a lot, and I think this is her wrestling with something on her own. I have immense respect for Flechette, and all I can do, all we can do, is hope she comes to her senses.” “What about her parents? Her family?” Vista asked. “I can’t talk about anything my patients discuss with me in my office,” Mrs. Yamada replied. “I’m sorry.” “She came from a broken home,” Miss Militia supplied the information instead. “She bounced between her mother, her father and the surrogate mother who had attempted to renege on the deal they’d made and keep her. With the number of times she changed between them and moved, I can’t imagine she has strong ties to the idea of ‘home’. Even within the Wards… New York has five small teams, and she moved between them as she changed residences.” “She didn’t say anything about that.” “It didn’t matter in the here and now. Her focus, her path, was school, her career with the Wards. She didn’t have much in the way of roots, but she had direction. I think that the events following the Echidna crisis left her more devastated than she let on.” “Can I call her?” Vista asked. “I don’t know if that would be wise,” Miss Militia said. “Do,” Tagg said. “Remind her what she’s leaving behind, tell her how you feel, then let her be. Too much pressure and she’s liable to be stubborn. Give her time to think, and you may sway her.” “Okay,” Vista said. “When you’re done, join the others in discussing battle plans. I’d rather not wait for Skitter’s forces to strike. If it comes down to it, we mobilize first.” “We’ll be fighting Flechette,” Vista said. Tagg nodded. “Very possible. If you don’t feel confident you can do it in good conscience, then I won’t make you. In the meantime, I’m requisitioning capes from nearby areas. If it comes down to it, I want to be ready for a fight.” “And if they don’t give us the chance?” Miss Militia asked. I missed Tagg’s response. It was monosyllabic. “If the Undersiders try to avoid direct engagement and attempt to come at us from another angle? Media? Revealing telling details? Financially? Through our families?” “Oh shit,” Clockblocker said. “They wouldn’t, would they?” Crucible asked. “They would,” Kid Win said. “Probably.” “They would,” Director Tagg agreed. “And I already have ideas in mind. This situation is far from unmanageable. Rest assured. I’ll need to make some calls. Miss Militia, are you up for another walk?” Tagg stepped into the elevator, holding the door open. It was too small for everyone to fit inside, but Miss Militia, the deputy and Clockblocker joined him. Mrs. Yamada started to step inside, then paused while standing in the doorway. “I’ll be in my office all day. If any of you need to talk about Flechette, or anything else that’s going on, come see me.” There was no reply. There might have been nods, but I didn’t have bugs on top of any of the Ward’s heads. The doors shut, and a few seconds passed, Kid Win, Crucible and Vista standing in the hallway with a handful of PRT officers. “Fuck,” Vista said. “Fuck this. Fuck you, Skitter, if you can hear me.” I waited to see if there was more, but neither she nor her teammates said anything. The drones Kid Win had made were doing a number on my bugs, catching me by surprise when they opened fire with lasers, striking from the other side of the room. It wasn’t easy to avoid them completely, when an exposed bug could get zapped, but keeping my bugs in hiding prevented me from seeing the drones themselves. Miss Militia left the building, walking. She wasn’t quite out of my range when she made her first call. “Mr. Hebert?” I sighed, then shifted position. “Everything alright?” Mr. Calle asked me. “Needed to get centered?” “Was listening in,” I said. “Listening in?” “I can hear what my insects hear. Tagg is confident. He’s calling in more capes, and preparing for a fight. He’s apparently not too worried about the Undersiders pulling something that isn’t a direct attack, but I don’t know what he’s got in mind, as far as trump cards go. Miss Militia is apparently calling my dad, so Tagg can talk with him.” “Wonderful,” Mr. Calle said. “Anything else?” “The Wards are upset over Flechette defecting.” “Okay. Something to keep in mind. Now, this is difficult to say, but-” Mr. Calle paused very deliberately. “I would never recommend my clients do anything illegal,” he said. “But you maybe suspect that if I had any leverage, I should exercise it?” “I would never say any such thing,” Mr. Calle said. He smiled. “But now that you mention it…” “There are options,” I said. I thought about the areas of attack that Miss Militia had outlined. Family would cross a line. Something to shake their confidence in the coming conflict. “Can you pass on a message?” “That would be a mistake, I think. I walk a fine line as it is, and I won’t have a hand in anything direct.” “Let’s talk about what I can do. First off, I think we should change things up. As it stands, the Protectorate East-North-East holds Brockton Bay in a specialized state of emergency. It’s a legal wild west, with very little precedent holding things together. Director Tagg reports to his superiors, who report to the United States government. This circumvents a great many of the usual checks and balances. Checks and balances I think we should put back into play.” “Contacting the District Attorney and bringing her to the discussion would tie Tagg’s hands, but it would also tie yours. We’d be working entirely within the law, certain items would be taken off the table. You couldn’t ask for condoned villainy, for example. Charges would inevitably move forward against you, but these same things would tie him up in managing things.” “Doesn’t seem worth it.” “It depends. It’s… pressure. The Director is focused on a half-dozen things at once. There’s a lot to be said for putting one more thing on his plate. I know he’s not trained in the particulars of law. He’d be forced out of his depth, made to consult others, made to wrap his head around terms he’s not familiar with. It would mandate that you, as a minor, would need a guardian present. Failing that, there’s a great many hoops they’d have to jump through. He’s a soldier. So long as this is a battlefield of some sort, he has a leg up. We can make it something else.” “Okay,” I said. “We’d be adding pressure, turning things around so he’s the one on his heels, but I’m still not convinced it’s worth the price of admission. Other options?” “He doesn’t care about image,” I said. “He said he figures it’ll get patched up with good PR in a matter of time, a few days back.” “It won’t hurt him as badly, then, but he’s more likely to make a mistake if it’s not something he pays attention to.” “An option,” I said. “It sets a bad tone, though. I’m really looking for cooperation. I’m putting everything on the line in the hopes of getting it. I don’t want them to be enemies, not any more than they are. And I don’t know that just talking to the media is going to be enough to get the results I want.” “It isn’t, frankly. Are there points you’re willing to compromise on?” “It doesn’t matter,” I said. “Because he’s not willing to meet me halfway.” Mr. Calle rubbed his chin. “Okay.” “So we need leverage, and it can’t be legal. Going to the District Attorney or the media has drawbacks.” “Then I need you to get in contact with Tattletale. Only we’ll be above-board, mostly, about how we handle it. She’s been arranging things for a while. Now it’s time to figure out just how much clout she has. We’ll hit them with the biggest card we have. We’ll make a play for ownership of the portal. Successful or not, it’ll distract them.” “I’ll do what I can to get in touch with her, then. My firm’s assets will be at your disposal, of course.” He stood from his seat to make the call. Apparently he didn’t find them much more comfortable than I did. He paced as he waited for the phone to ring. “Cecily? Need you to pull some strings. And route me to someone, best if it’s untraceable.” It wouldn’t be a direct call. That didn’t make sense. I focused my attention elsewhere in the building. The outlet that fed Kid Win’s anti-bug drones… I found the wiring in the walls and ordered cockroaches to start chewing through it. Petty, maybe, but I didn’t want to be disarmed, not with the way things were going. The heroes were returning, Sere and Dovetail entering the lobby. I planted bugs on Dovetail as she made her way indoors, and as discreetly as I was able, I transferred the bugs to Tagg and Miss Militia, who were waiting. “They’re moving,” Dovetail said, “… soldiers. Arming civilians. Squads no larger than five people, across the city.” “Good,” Tagg said. “Tell the others,” Miss Militia said, “Adamant’s getting a cycle retooled to handle more weight before he leaves again. He’ll go with Triumph. Log it all in the system.” “Will do,” Dovetail said. Miss Militia patted her on the shoulder as she made her way inside. Miss Militia and Tagg remained in the lobby, by the hallway to the elevators. They didn’t say much. A few words on degrees of lethal force, but no camraderie, not even much in the way of small talk. My cockroaches found their way through the wire, and promptly died as they came in contact with the live circuit. A breaker blew, but Kid Win didn’t seem to react. Hopefully the drones wouldn’t get a chance to recharge. A few minutes passed, as my lawyer got in touch with someone, and started talking about media contacts. Then my father arrived. I could sense him as he got out of a truck in the parking lot, making his way inside. “Mr. Hebert,” Miss Militia said, extending a hand. My dad shook it. “Thank you for coming in again,” Director Tagg said. He extended a hand. Again, my father shook it. “My office?” Tagg asked. My dad nodded. My pulse was pounding as Miss Militia, Tagg and my father entered the elevator and made their way upstairs. “She’s here?” my dad asked. “In a room downstairs with her lawyer,” Miss Militia answered. “She hired him herself?” “I imagine she did,” Miss Militia said. “With the speed he pulled things together, I suspect she may have more working in the background. Crime does pay, if she’s paying their salaries. They’re apparently top of the line, as parahuman defense attorneys go.” “I can’t believe this is all real.” “It is,” Miss Militia said. “It’s very real.” “And very real blood will be shed tonight,” Tagg said, “If we can’t rein her in.” Rein me in. They exited the elevator and made their way to Tagg’s office. “These,” Tagg leaned forward, and my bugs could hear something move. “Are the charges as they stand.” I didn’t sense it, but my bugs could hear papers rustle. I might not have identified the sound if I hadn’t had the context. A few long seconds passed, and I could hear the rustling again. The turning of a page. I clenched my fist. “Problem?” Mr. Calle asked, covering the mouthpiece of his phone. “My dad’s here. They’ve got him in Tagg’s office, and they’re filling him in on their version of events.” “Right. Let’s put a stop to that. I’ll be back.” Phone still pressed to his ear, he picked up his briefcase, tapping on the door three times with the side of his shoe. A PRT uniform unlocked and opened the door, and my lawyer strode out. It shut behind him. Upstairs, my dad turned another page. He was reading through it all. All the details I’d gone over with my lawyer, only without my feedback, without my voice to point out the places where they were going a little overboard, naming charges they could throw at me, without checking whether they could stick. Not that the difference was that big, comparing what I’d actually done to what they were accusing me of. I heard the sound of him flipping through the last few pages before he dropped the pad on the table. “Okay.” “She’s in a lot of trouble,” Tagg said. “This isn’t news to me,” my dad answered, his voice quiet. “If the charges went through, she would face being charged as an adult. The three strikes protection act wouldn’t mitigate things. I’d say the worst case scenario is execution, or indefinite detention in the Birdcage, but the best case scenario for her isn’t much better.” My dad didn’t reply to that. “Her power means we can’t keep her in a conventional prison. She’s too flexible, too versatile for us to use any of our current means of keeping her from using her ability. Even today, contained in a cell, she’s been literally ‘bugging’ us to track our movements and listen in on conversations. We had our tinker put together a countermeasure, but it’s not perfect.” Again, my dad was silent. “I have two daughters. Four and six years older than Taylor,” the Director said. “I can’t imagine.” “I can’t either,” my dad said. “Like I said, it doesn’t feel real.” “I’d like you to come with me the next time I speak to your daughter.” “She didn’t listen to me before, she won’t listen now,” my dad said. “I didn’t ask you to come because I thought you could convince her,” Tagg said. “You don’t have to say anything, as a matter of fact.” What was he up to? My lawyer had reached the top floor, and was striding between cubicles and desks. He raised his voice to ask a question I couldn’t make out, and someone answered him. He altered his course slightly in response, walked with more purpose, directly for Tagg, Miss Militia and my father. “I’d like to talk to her alone,” my dad said. “We can arrange that,” Tagg said. I clenched my fists. Using my dad as a pawn? Damn right I was going to escalate. Which, I suspected, was exactly what Tagg was aiming to achieve. This was something to put me off balance, just like we were looking to do to him by way of leveraging control of the portal. My lawyer knocked on the door and then opened it without waiting for a response. “My client would like a word.” “Of course,” Tagg said. As the four of them exited his office and made their way to the elevator, I turned the two words around in my head. Had he sounded sarcastic? Did he simply expect me to interrupt? I couldn’t say. I could only wait as they made their way downstairs. I was stuck, my back hurting where my arms were in a more or less fixed position. I stood, stretched as well as I was able, tossed my head to one side in an attempt to get my hair out of my face. When that didn’t work, I bent over and lowered my face to my hands to tidy my hair. Then I sat, stewing in unidentifiable emotions. Trepidation, dread, fear, guilt, shame, anger, relief… none I could put a finger on. “Did you know?” Miss Militia asked. “Me?” my dad asked, by way of response. “Who she was? What she was?” “Yes,” he said. I could feel alarm sing through me, inexplicable, but jarring. Then he seemed to change his mind, “No.” And the emotion that hit me at that was just as strong as that misplaced sense of alarm. Damn Tagg. Damn him for bringing my dad into this. The four of them stopped outside of the cell. Miss Militia used her phone to unlock it, and Tagg gestured for my dad to enter. I saw him hesitate as he stepped into the room, dark sheet metal, a reflective pane of one-way glass, the metal table bolted to the floor, my handcuffs, locked to the table in turn. Me, with my hair in some disarray, a touch damp from the shower and ineffectual toweling, from sweat, in my black uniform with the word ‘villain’ marked clearly across it. I could see it, his expression changing, the disbelief he’d professed to becoming something else entirely. His feelings were as mixed as mine. I could tell just by looking at him, by imagining what he’d been through, the person standing by, dealing with the aftermath of everything I’d done. His frustration, his confusion, pain, and embarrassment. His loneliness, disappointment, his fear. And, somehow, as though it were too much to bottle in, it seemed to boil over in the form of one singular emotion. I could see his jaw shift as he clenched his teeth, met my eyes and looked away. The sudden agitation that seemed to grip him, as he opened and closed his fists. Tagg and Miss Militia had reached the interior of the room on the other side of the one way mirror, while Mr. Calle stood in the hallway, speaking on the phone. I stood from the chair as my dad approached, his body language making it all too clear what he was about to do. Miss Militia took one look and reacted, turning around to hurry back out of the room, to intervene. Tagg said something, two words I couldn’t be bothered to decipher, and she stopped in her tracks. My dad raised his hand, palm open, and I closed my eyes, lifting my chin to take the hit. It didn’t come. My dad wrapped his arms around my shoulders instead. I squeaked, and I couldn’t say whether it was because he was squeezing me too tight or if it was because of an overflow of emotion similar to the one he’d just displayed. I stood there, unable to return the hug with the way I was cuffed to the table, unable to speak around the lump in my throat. When minutes passed and we hadn’t exchanged a single word, Tagg and Miss Militia stepped out of the observation room, signaling Mr. Calle. “Let’s talk,” Tagg said. I broke away from my dad. Blinked where there were tears in the corners of my eyes. I didn’t care if Tagg saw. “I’m waiting on a response from my colleagues,” Mr. Calle said. “There’s no reason to speak further, unless you’re capitulating.” “No,” Tagg answered. “But I’d like to go over the main points.” This was why he wanted my dad here, I thought. “You’ve informed me that your teammates, many of whom are known murderers, are going to declare war against the PRT in three hours and twenty minutes, without word from you.” My dad took a seat to my left, watching me carefully. “Yes,” I said. “You’ve described them as unpredictable. They’re undeniably dangerous. You think they’ll hurt people. They’ll pull out all the stops, to get you back, and to hurt us. The good guys.” “Yes,” I said, not taking my eyes off Tagg. “But I don’t think you’re a good guy, Director.” “I don’t think you’re a good person either,” Tagg said, “and the court of public opinion is likely to agree with me before they agree with you.” “Let’s not resort to name calling this early in the discussion,” Mr. Calle said. “Right,” Tagg said, “It wastes time, and you have very little.” “Neither of us want this to happen, Director,” I said. “Neither of us have time, and neither of us want a war. Except maybe you do. Maybe you think you’d win, and it’d be a bump in the PRT’s ratings.” “No,” he said, “I think, like any altercation, both sides would lose something. But let’s talk about your terms. You want amnesty for your criminal friends?’ I was acutely aware of my dad watching me. “You want to depose me, raising Miss Militia to my place, and in the doing, force the PRT to relinquish all ideas of humans governing parahumans, to help keep those with incredible power in check.” “And you wanted me to allow you to become an official vigilante, leaving your group behind while you worked to hunt down psychopaths with powers. I’ve explained why that can’t happen. I’m not sure if you intend to change your demands, or-” “I’ll go to the Birdcage if I have to,” I said. “Because the rest of it, I believe in it enough to make the sacrifice.” “Taylor,” my dad said. The first words he’d said to me since the breakfast we’d had together, on the day I’d been outed. “Why?” “Because we’re losing. We’re so focused on the little things, on petty squabbles and factions and vendettas, that we’re losing against the real dangers. The Class S threats. The fact that the world’s going to end in a year and eleven months. Did you hear about that?” He shook his head. “I… I read the letter you left me, at Annette’s grave. Realized it was probably what you were trying to write, the night you left. Before you changed your mind.” The night I left, so long ago. When I’d first met Coil. “A lot of what I did, it was to stop the man who really wanted to take over the city. Who would have been far worse than any of us Undersiders. And I did that because he had a little girl captive. Dinah Alcott. She could see the future, and she says the world ends in two years.” My dad shook his head, “No.” “Yes. The heroes know it. It’s a big part of why the PRT is falling apart. You’ve heard about that on the news?” “I… some. But I haven’t paid much attention since I found out that you-” “That I’m a supervillain,” I said. He flinched visibly at that. “Interesting,” Tagg cut in. “That you call yourself that. You say you’ve had justifications for what you’ve done, but you call yourself a villain.” I wanted to hit him, for cutting into my conversation with my dad, for polluting my attempts to explain things. “I am,” I told him. “I’ve done bad things.” “Left a trail of devastation in your wake.” “Yes,” I said. “And I’m willing to pay the price. I’ll go to the Birdcage, a place you described as a literal hell on Earth. A place where people just as scary as the ones I’ve spent the last few months fighting stay. A place where some of those very people are currently imprisoned. Lung, Bakuda, Trickster. They probably want to inflict fates worse than death on me. But I’ll do it. Because I really truly believe the world needs the PRT, or a PRT, one without lunatics like you in charge, and maybe bringing me in helps keep a handful more capes in the roster, keeps my friends secure where they are, so they can help.” I was heated, my words angry. “Your friends,” he said. “My friends.” “That’s the rapist, Jean-paul? Alec? A murderer.” “Regent. He was the son of a supervillain, screwed from the get go, and yeah, maybe some shady stuff went down, way back then. I think he’s… not in love, but he’s close to Imp. Somewhere between love and friendship, maybe.” “Imp. She’s the one who makes it a game, to psychologically and mentally torture gang members who step foot in her territory, until they have mental break downs.” “Yes,” I said, through grit teeth. “It’s more complicated than that, she’s been through a lot, but yes. And I heard directly from people who were grateful to her for scaring off the real rapists and murderers.” He didn’t pay me any mind. “Who else is there? Hellhound.” “She prefers Bitch,” I said. “But she’s Rachel to me.” “Who had her monster dogs chew up innocents who’d gotten in her way.” “It was a bad time for her. Weren’t you just excusing Flechette, because we’ve all been through some shit? I know Rachel as the person who takes care of wayward souls, grown men and children who are lost in a way even we can’t fathom, with the things we’ve been through.” “And Grue? Do tell me how you see him.” “I liked him,” I said. “If I’d stayed with them, maybe he and I would have tried to make it work.” “Romance.” I met my dad’s eyes. His forehead was creased with worry. My power was buzzing around the periphery of my consciousness. I found refuge in the bugs, paid attention to their movements as they avoided the remaining drones, found my center, so to speak. Calm. He wants me upset. “Romance,” I said. “He was my rock, when I needed a rock. And I was his, when-” “When he snapped,” Tagg cut in. “It wasn’t like that.” “He was the stable one, until he wasn’t stable,” Tagg said. “Until he killed Burnscar. Yet I suspect he’s the one in charge, now that you’ve left?” “Yes,” I said. “And with the dozens, hundreds of people I’ve tried to take care of or whose lives I’ve saved, I trust Grue to look after them and keep the peace. I wouldn’t give him that responsibility, with all the time and effort I’ve invested in them, if I didn’t trust him.” “Very generous,” Tagg told me. “And Tattletale. Where do I even start?” “With the fact that she was my best friend. That she’s maybe our best bet at understanding what’s going on? Understanding the Endbringers and what they’re doing? Understanding powers? Finding the Nine before they bring about the end of the world? Understanding how the world ends?” “All of this, from the girl who used her power to convince her brother to kill himself, before fleeing, spending years on the streets, stealing wallets and using the account numbers to take whole fortunes?” “All wrong,” I said. “And who planted the seeds that led to Panacea breaking down and mutilating her sister.” “Those seeds were planted a long time before we talked to Panacea,” I said. This was what Tagg had wanted. He’d devastated my defenses, bringing my dad into this. “Nonetheless,” Tagg said, leaning back. “So, Danny Hebert, what do you think about your daughter’s friends?” My dad glanced at me, then looked at the Director. “I know less about them than either of you.” “That’s not important,” the Director said. “I just want you to answer one question for me. Assume we’re both right. Me and your daughter. Assume that they’re everything we described them as. Do you really want them in control of this city’s underworld?” Again, my dad looked at me. “No need to double-check with your daughter. I’m wanting your honest opinion, as a man on the streets, from someone who has to live in this city without any real say over what happens in the cape-on-cape fights and politics. Do you really want them in charge?” “No,” my dad said. I did my best not to show it, but the word was like a punch in the gut. “I’m sorry, Taylor, but-” “Are they really that much worse than the ABB? Than Empire Eighty-Eight?” “With them, we…” my dad trailed off. “With them, we could pretend things weren’t bad!” I said, “But they were worse. You know they were worse. The people you worked with, the addicts, the people without money…” “Does it matter?” Tagg asked. “You don’t have your dad’s support, what makes you think you’d get anyone else’s?” I grit my teeth. “No,” my father said. “Hm?” Tagg raised his bushy eyebrows. “No. I think you’re wrong there,” my dad told Tagg. “She has support. When you attacked her in the school, there were people who stood by her. If I’m being honest, I don’t get it, I don’t want those people in charge, but I don’t want any villains in charge. I don’t understand the politics behind this, or the context, but I trust my daughter.” “Of course you trust your daughter. The curse of being a parent, I know it well.” “You wanted my opinion,” my dad said, his voice a little firmer, “You get my opinion. Others believe in her. I trust her, even if I don’t know enough to follow what this is all about. Even if I barely feel like I know her right now, I can look her in the eye and know that’s the same girl I’ve spent the last sixteen years with. With some of the worst qualities of my wife and I, and a lot more of the better ones.” “I wonder how long that opinion will hold,” Tagg said. “Because we have, what is it? Three hours and a handful of minutes? Then the war she set in motion hits this city.” “It can be avoided,” I said. “If we cave in to your extortion,” Tagg said. “Except you think too small, Skitter. It’s a common flaw among teenagers, however powerful they are. They attend high school, and all they can see is the school, their peers. Tunnel vision. You’re the same. You’re focused on this city, but you don’t see what happens elsewhere. You don’t see the ramifications.” “Which are?” “You’d be strengthening the PRT a little in the short-term, but the long-term? Letting villains take charge, taking the humans out of the PRT, condoning villainy? It would doom us all. What you’re threatening us with? It’s only one fight. And maybe it’s ugly, but it’s one fight. If they kill us, if they become monsters of the Slaughterhouse Nine’s caliber to defeat us, then we win. Your side wins the battle, loses the war. If you don’t go that far? If you leave us in a state to recover? We pick ourselves up and we lick our wounds, and then we rebuild.” Tagg cupped his hands, moving them as if balancing a scale. “One fight, one set of casualties in one area of one medium-sized city, compared to consequences that reach across North America? Across the world? It doesn’t measure up.” I glanced at my lawyer. “You don’t have an answer for me?” Tagg asked. “I have one,” I said. I hope. Mr. Calle looked at his phone, then gave me one curt nod. “What?” Tagg asked. “It’s in the news,” Mr. Calle said. Tagg and Miss Militia simultaneously reached for their smartphones. I was probably as tense as they were, as they thumbed past the security screens and found news sites. Miss Militia was a few seconds faster than Tagg. “What did you do?” she asked. “It’s all legitimate,” I said. “I’m pretty sure. Legal enough.” “What is it?” my dad asked. “Property,” I said. “I expect a great amount of property just changed hands.” “Who’s Sierra Kiley?” Miss Militia asked. It was all I could do to keep from smiling with joy. Of all the people to serve as a public face, Tattletale had found Sierra. Someone I owed, in many ways. Someone who’d, maybe, followed recent events and rethought her initial doubts. “No idea,” I said, maintaining my poker face. “I don’t understand,” my dad said. “Quite simple,” Mr. Calle told him. “I believe the PRT has become aware that properties in a wide area around the portal in downtown Brockton Bay, previously under the control of various individuals and groups, just exchanged hands, finding itself in the hands of one singular individual.” “And that one individual is in thrall to the villains who control this town,” Tagg said. “I resent the notion,” I told him, and I allowed myself a small smile. “But it would be amusing, if it were true. You might even have to rethink what you were saying about how narrow my worldview is. I mean, that’s a whole other world. Anything but narrow, when you think about it.” “You’re not as clever as you think you are,” he said. “Probably not,” I said. “You’re playing out your hand.” “And you’re bringing my family into this. Remember how our little feud started? You crossed the line. You made the call to out me, because you wanted me in custody. Congratulations, you got me in custody. You broke the unwritten rules, because you think that you don’t have to obey them, since you aren’t a cape. Except you’re forgetting why they exist in the first place. The rules keep the game afloat. They keep everything afloat, at the core of it. We all know the PRT is a sinking ship. You don’t agree with what I’m doing? Fine. But at least I’m trying to keep it afloat.” “And you?” my dad asked. It took me a second to realize he was looking at Miss Militia. “What about me?” she asked. “You’ve been quiet. Are you here just in case my daughter turns violent?” “No. She’s not violent. Not in that sense.” “You don’t have anything to say?” “As grateful as I am for the right to free speech,” Miss Militia said, “I’m grateful for the right to silence as well.” “Then you don’t agree with your Director?” “I didn’t say that. What I’m saying is that there’s no right answer here, and I’m glad I don’t have to be the one to make the decision.” “Isn’t that cowardly?” I asked. “No. It’s human, to not want to make the hard choices,” she said. She raised one boot off the ground and placed it on the corner of her chair. “And it’s good strategy to conserve your strength.” “We’re not fighting,” I said. “We’re not going to get tired.” “Physically?” she asked. “No. Emotionally? Mentally? Yes.” “You’re anticipating the fight,” I said. “You don’t think there’ll be a consensus in time.” She shook her head, then used one hand to fix her hair, tucking it behind one ear. “No. I don’t think there will be a fight. I hope there’ll be a consensus, but it’s not necessary. Your ploys with the portal, controlling the territory around it, it’s clever, it’ll take a lot of time before we can pass legislation or conduct a thorough enough investigation to justifiably seize it. But I’m not worried about that, either, nor am I concerned about the damage Tattletale could do in other areas.” “Then why do you need to conserve your strength?” I asked. “Because we’re dealing with the devil,” Miss Militia said. “I’m angry at you, Taylor, and half of that is because you put us in this situation, a set of circumstances where we’re liable to lose either way. Because I agree with the conclusions you came to, how the PRT is needed, the need for compromise, and because I can’t condone how you approached those conclusions.” She shifted position, and the black-green energy of her flickered from her right hip to her right hand, appearing in her hand, amorphous and shapeless, as if searching for a form to take. When she didn’t grasp it, it darted to her left hip, and the metal of a cutlass clinked against her seat. “But I really hate you because we had to call her,” Miss Militia intoned. Tagg looked at his phone. “Assuming she’s on time, it’ll be less than ten minutes.” “Her?” my dad asked. “You’ve played your part,” Tagg responded. “Go. It’d be better in the long run. Wash your hands of this, leave. Your daughter’s in custody, she’s going to one prison or another. You can go home and know that it was inevitable, and that this was the best outcome. It takes a few years maybe, but you lament your mistakes, and you eventually make an uneasy peace with what happened to your daughter.” “And if I stay?” “You won’t have any of that peace of mind,” Tagg said, and that was all. My dad looked at me, “I think you’re wrong. Everything before this, it was the times where I thought I had to walk away, look away, times where I thought things were inevitable, that I regretted the most.” He took my hand. “I’ll stay.” “Thank you,” I murmured the words. Our guest didn’t arrive right away. It might have been fitting, in a dramatic way, for her to appear as we finished our dialogue, but things weren’t so carefully orchestrated in the real world. “Those things they said you did?” my dad murmured. “Mostly true,” I said. He squeezed my hand for a moment, but it wasn’t reassuring. Something else. Concern, maybe, channeled through a simple gesture. Concern for me, for what I’d become. I wanted nothing more than for my dad and I to talk for a month straight, just to hash things out, to form some kind of balance, some semblance of a connection like we’d once had. Instead, there was only this, like the father-daughter relationship distilled. Not enough communication, barely any familiarity, both of us flooded with very different sorts of fear, confusion, and frustration. I imagined it was much like the bonds that had kept primitive families together in an era when living from week to week was a challenge. Basic, crude, but almost primeval. She arrived, minutes later. A woman, tall, in a suit, carrying nothing with her. I sensed her at the periphery of my range, walking with a steady, strong stride. I was reminded of the Siberian, almost. The way she moved with the confidence of the indomitable, the way that she was almost careful as she moved among people. Except that where the Siberian was only careful among her teammates, this woman was careful with everybody. It took her five minutes to reach us, walking through the crowds, using the pedestrian crossings. But the person I found myself comparing her to, as she approached the PRT building, wasn’t the Siberian. It was me. She reached her home ground, and people started to recognize her. They reacted, moving out of her way. Showing respect. Showing fear, in some cases. Three of the Wards were in the elevator when it stopped at the ground floor. Kid Win was taking his drone recharge station apart, which meant it was just Clockblocker, Crucible and Vista that crossed paths with her. The Wards took only a moment to recognize her as she entered the elevator, and the two native Brocktonites left, pulling a protesting, confused Crucible after them. In a matter of a minute, she was opening the door to the cell. A woman, the sort who could be forty but looked like she was in her late twenties. Hispanic, insofar as that was a descriptor, with darker skin and long, straight black hair. But more than her description, the part of her that hit me was her presence. Almost without thinking about it, I got out of my chair, standing, the chains of my cuffs pulling taut against the lock on the table. My lawyer, Miss Militia and Tagg all stood, my dad a step behind them, bewildered. The only one not in the know. “Chief Director,” I said. “Deputy Chief. I’ve stepped down from my position, but I still have to train my replacement,” she said, her gaze piercing through me. I couldn’t even tell that one of her eyes was a prosthetic. “And seeing to some leftover crises. Hello, Ms. Hebert.” She extended a hand. As though driven to accept the handshake by a peculiar gravity, I extended my own hand and shook it. Her firm grip could have pulverized me. I might have been less intimidated if I were trapped in a small pen with an angry bull elephant. “And Mr. Danny Hebert,” she said. She shook my father’s hand. Tagg stood from the chair at the table and moved over one left, leaving the seat for his superior. “Since you’ve made up your mind about staying, you’ll need to know. This is Deputy Chief Director Costa-Brown of the PRT.” My father nodded. I was getting the feeling he was almost shell-shocked. To find out about the end of the world, the situation his daughter was in, and countless other things, the name of this woman might not have even processed for him. “Otherwise known as Alexandria,” Alexandria said, taking the chair opposite me. This entry was posted in 22.03 and tagged Adamant, Alexandria, Calle, Clockblocker, Crucible, Dovetail, Kid Win, Miss Militia, Sere, Tagg, Taylor, Taylor's Dad, Vista by wildbow. Bookmark the permalink. 280 thoughts on “Cell 22.3” Rika Covenant on May 9, 2013 at 00:02 said: devours voraciously Trusting on May 9, 2013 at 00:29 said: don’t get a upset stomach ! Faerie on May 9, 2013 at 00:02 said: First!~ Time to dive into the next installment. Nope~ I wish it showed seconds, too. Since we were in the same minute. Haha. Either way, we were the first-s- to sacrifice ourselfs to the Wildbow. ❤ …ourselves* damn, mind, you trippin’. Psycho Gecko on May 9, 2013 at 00:58 said: All you need now is the heart-shaped bed, disco ball, Barry White singing, and see-through clothes. theant87 on May 9, 2013 at 00:59 said: Wildbow must seem like an angry, evil god to the wormverse. So I’m thinking virgins for sacrifice. Maybe some goats, or chickens. Probably not pigs considering his handle. He could want something original though. Manatees, Swans, or unicorns. He’s Canadian, so how about baby seals? Ooohh! PG! Nice one! (It’s fun, actually. You should join the club….) God damn you are cringy. SubKiwi on November 16, 2016 at 01:24 said: Woah we’re reading this at the exact same time basically, that’s crazy Dinstow on May 9, 2013 at 00:04 said: “…last fight with Mannequin and Burnscar.” Mannequin and Crawler? Packbat on May 9, 2013 at 00:14 said: Pinkhair on May 9, 2013 at 00:44 said: Lisa needs braces! …snrk fantapop on January 10, 2014 at 03:18 said: notes on May 9, 2013 at 02:52 said: Flechette’s email includes “only things she knows” s/b “things only she knows.” Probably. Unless you mean to imply that they their test is reversed because they expect Tattletale to have Flechette’s innermost secrets already, and Regent to screw up the email by including more than Flechette could possibly know, in addition to things only Flechette should know? Both are acceptable to mean the same thing, though the first is more vague and can have alternative readings. Clearing it up would be most appropriate. They don’t mean the same thing, really. The first means the email did not contain things Flechette is not expected to know; the second means that it contained things another (implied Regent) is not expected to know. “Only things she knows” contains “things only she knows”, though, and thus can substitute vaguely for the latter. Again, it is best to replace it (either with the latter, or to rearrange the original to only things she’d know) to be more precise, but it still is acceptable. agreyworld on May 9, 2013 at 06:11 said: “She extended a hand. As though driven to accept the handshake by a peculiar gravity, I extended my own hand and shook it” Is she not still cuffed to the table? The cuffs aren’t the arrest style cuffs where the wrists are bound close together, but the type that have a longer chain so they can be attached to things like tables and the like while not preventing movement completely. shu on November 12, 2017 at 16:06 said: Only noticed this on my 2nd read, but I believe this line is in error. “Lung, Bakuda, Trickster. ” Trickster isn’t in the birdcage was he? Perhaps it meant to say ‘Teacher’ ? Lord Khurush on January 13, 2018 at 23:32 said: Trickster was sent to the birdcage after the fight with noelle/ echidna. comickry on May 9, 2013 at 00:16 said: “…last fight with Mannequin and Burnscar.” Wasn’t it someone else? Ninja’d By the comment you replied to, even. (I’m not mocking you for it — I can see exactly how it happened — but it’s still hilarious.) Noise on May 9, 2013 at 00:16 said: “But I really hate you because we had to call her” Miss Militia intoned. Missing a comma! (Hope this ins’t a repeat) I was gonna mention Dinah Calvert, but that got fixed. > Flechette’s actions threaten to taint this organization for some time to come..” Missing period in ellipsis. “the black-green energy of her flickered from her right hip” Of her… what? Weapon? Power? Passenger? Olivebirdy on October 12, 2014 at 15:39 said: “No,” he said, “I think, like any altercation, both sides would lose something.” -like in any altercation To find out about the end of the world, the situation his daughter was in, and countless other things, the name of this woman might not have even processed for him. -Something’s missing from this sentence, This one wasn’t fixed! Costa-Brown’s arrival is actually a source of optimism for me. Her being here means that there is someone with authority over Tagg present and able to broker a deal despite Tagg’s intransigence. Adam on May 9, 2013 at 00:17 said: Even moreso since she’s working for Cauldron and Cauldron wanted Skitter in charge of the city. I don’t think it was that Cauldron wanted Skitter in charge, so much as they wanted to work with the person in charge of Brockton Bay (who happened to be Skitter at the time). I think it has something to do with Skitter — it wasn’t until Accord had a chance to evaluate her that she was considered a possible replacement to Coil — but it could be as simple as “Accord thought Skitter was capable of taking charge of Brockton Bay and holding it”. beyondperformant on May 9, 2013 at 04:48 said: I can’t recall if Alexandria was “in” on the deal with Coil or has any stake in the Taylor the way Cauldron did. And if Alexandria doesn’t know why does Accord? From the interlude about Alexandria I get the impression that she is being manipulated by the NumberMan and Doctor Mother; that the terrible things she does for Cauldron are rationalized as being the only way to perfect the formulas and turn the tide on the Endbringers. What should Alexandria want to get out of this situation? Her plans should actually be accelerated by Taylor’s demands as she seems to want to put Parahumans into leadership positions. Alexandria was part of the whole “Coil is our best chance” thing with Cauldron; we first heard about it through her discussing it with Doctor. I think that’s all we know so far. Wageslave on May 9, 2013 at 00:21 said: There is an additional factor at work, here. Costa-Brown is a cape. And former Director current Deputy Director of the organization that Tagg says ‘shouldn’t have capes in charge’. This is an obscene amount of leverage brought to the table for a ‘nobody’ that is in a ‘nowhere city’. Things just got QUITE interesting indeed. Good show, suh. At least Tagg has FINALLY realized he’s out of his depth. (would have italic’d the ‘finally’ instead of capsing, but, no guide to what tags work in comments and no one on IRC knew either. x_x) En on May 9, 2013 at 09:30 said: i, em, strong and a href, according to Packbat u confirmed not to work Too complicated to predict what will happen. Alexandria thinks the atrocities she was a part of were for the greater good, and probably thinks like Taylor does. The world needs the PRT, and they should be focusing on the S-Class threats. On the other hand we still do not know what the ultimate goal of Cauldron is, and what part Taylor would play in it. Taylor definitely screwed over that plan with this stunt, so I am not sure how she is going to approach Skitter. Then there is the whole crimes against humanity thing, and the fact that her organization is killing people to keep this secret that WILL be outed at some point in the future. The public isn’t going to like what they have done and the fact that “heroes” kept people who have arguably spread as much death and suffering to innocents as the 9 scott free. Once this stuff comes out, it will blow watergate out of the water. The PRT might be dissolved not matter what they do, and Alexandria/Eidolon/Legend would have warrents out for their arrest. If there aren’t any, than the PRT looks even worse for allowing such people to get away with their crimes, and be seen as hypocrites for not allowing the deal with Skitter. So with all that in mind, I can’t honestly predict what she will do. I just think it’d be funny if Alexandria shut up Tagg’s stupid mouthhole with something like, “Are you seriously fucking kidding me? You brought me here for this? Agree, you assclown. Agree till it hurts. You dumb as whale shit excuse for a Director, you’re going to play hardball on this with the world at stake?” Hah, that would be good. Alathon on May 9, 2013 at 00:52 said: We can hope! But a lot more likely if she’d shown up at 8:29. Let’s see if Alexandria is as rational as Psycho Gecko . frozen chicken on May 9, 2013 at 03:35 said: The end of the world is not fun. People stop building roller coasters or making ice cream when they’re more worried about surviving the post-apocalypse. It’s also bad for business. But no, go ahead, let everyone get butthurt and complain about someone trying to stop the end of the world not having a wide enough view. Some might argue against the rational part, but I’m not stupid. Luke Licens on May 9, 2013 at 11:44 said: That’s why you get invited to all the best parties. Or at least why you crash them, anyway… I’m not stupid…pants are stupid! tosses them in the air! Janeway: No YOU’RE the crazy one! camo005 on May 9, 2013 at 00:17 said: Fun chapter…and now back to the waiting game. SuperG on May 9, 2013 at 00:17 said: First sensible comment: Alright. Not entirely sure what’s going on with the portal, or WTF Alexandria is going to DO, but… this should be interesting. I’m actually curious: To what extent is this a reflection of Danny getting hurt early on in a couple situations where everything was going to pot and to what extent is this real? I find it plausible that Yamada would draw that conclusion (and I don’t think she’s wrong about the existence of the pattern) but I’m curious about its validity. I think this is really interesting. The only situation I can think of right now is Danny being involved in the explosion at the debate, and from the PRT’s limited perspective this shortly led to Calvert/Coil’s death and Echidna’s release. Was there anything else? First would be Shatterbird — after which Skitter took down Mannequin and then led the team in attacks on the Slaughterhouse Nine. Third might be Tagg filling Danny’s house with PRT agents after the incident at the school. Or perhaps more specifically, I would say revealing her identity, forcing her father to have some level of involvement. Would Danny possibly being affected by Leviathan count? Dinstow on May 10, 2013 at 01:38 said: I wouldn’t think so, since that’s not really something that anyone had any control over. Plus I think he wasn’t affected by Leviathan – their house wasn’t flooded or damaged and he was secure in the shelter. Rereading this chapter, I think Tagg only asked Danny to go because he thought he would no longer be useful as a weapon against Taylor. There’s a bit of an information inbalance and deficit, with heroes knowing a lot less about what happened in those situations and Taylor not knowing what they think happened. Then again, with Tagg there’s always an information deficit. The Sandman on May 9, 2013 at 00:24 said: I find it interesting (and disturbing) that Miss Militia and Tagg think that whatever Alexandria is going to do here is going to be something that Danny wouldn’t want to see. I mean, whatever it is, it’s unpleasant enough that it’s actually making Tagg show something that in a dim light could almost pass for basic human decency. > I find it interesting (and disturbing) that Miss Militia and Tagg think that whatever Alexandria is going to do here is going to be something that Danny wouldn’t want to see. …I hadn’t even thought of that. What on earth do they think is about to happen? What could possibly be happening that’s more disturbing than threatening Taylor with Birdcaging, other than maybe beating her to within an inch of her life right there in the interrogation room? Someguy on May 9, 2013 at 00:36 said: Telling Taylor to do what Cauldron wants or she’s gonna “disappear” her by hauling her off to Doctor Mother for experiments and killing her father to dispose of witnesses? Yeah, except the last thing Cauldron wanted was to have Skitter work into their plans with Accord. Nah, at that point Miss Militia would rebel, Cauldron would be outed by Tattletale, and they would accomplish her goal of getting rid of Tagg. Not to mention Taylor agreed with her at the Echidna fight that the world needs the PRT to fight the Endbringers. Doing that pretty much guarantees the PRT gets destroyed, which Alexandria does not want. I am very unsure do to how complicated the situation is just how things will go. But my best guess is Alexandria has to realize that the PRT is a sinking ship, and that Cauldron/her crimes will be outed at some point in the near future which means she will probably be forced to go on the run. Alexandria, in her own fucked up genocide way, wants to help the world. Accepting the deal, as confirmed by Dinah telling her to give herself up, improves the chances of saving it. So I think she will accept it, then Tagg does something stupid that either outs Cauldron, forces Miss Useless to do something, or causes him to mysteriously disappear. Miss Militia, rebel? This arc is showing us she’s got much less spine than we thought. See below for my comment on her. I’m going to wait for at least one more chapter before I vote for her being the most useless hero in worm. Feel free to vote in other categories down below. They might just be ruthless enough to hire Cauldron to de-power her. They claim they have that capability, after all. Ah, so then they can’t put her in the birdcage and she goes straight to non-powered juvie instead. They claim to be able to depower the ones they grant powers to — that might not be the same thing. Or the opposite. Taylor DID agree with Alexandria and she WAS a part of their plan. Maybe they offer her those power boosters that Eidolon was taking or they found a way to induce 2nd trigger events. I can see them offer to work with her to try and hunt the 9. It would be a huge twist, and we would see her interact with the big three, harbinger, and maybe contessa while they both plan to screw the other over if the world is saved. I think the very fact it’s Costa-Brown and it’s revealed that she’s Alexandria might be the very first thing he doesn’t want to see. alexanderthesoso on May 10, 2013 at 11:16 said: They already talked about what’s been happening to those that have tried to expose cauldron. They expect alexandria to squish her like a bug. razorsmile on May 9, 2013 at 00:26 said: – Things are just ramping up and up and up. – Glad she got to meet her father again and that he’s still down with her – so Alexandria is here to, what? Talk Taylor into giving up? Out-Think Tattletale? Act as a supreme physical deterrent against the Undersiders trying anything? – I am now waiting for Raymond Chandler’s man-with-a-gun to show up (in the form of Behemoth attack or whatever) and scatter everyone’s plans to the four winds Welp, time to enter stasis for the next forty-seven and a half hours. I keep refreshing https://parahumans.wordpress.com/2013/05/11/cell-22-4/ but nothing’s appearing. Freak King on May 9, 2013 at 00:46 said: When I first opened this chapter 22.2 was stuck to the bottom. Woop de fucking doo. Alexandria. That’s Tagg’s big hand? Here’s my hand, Tagg. It has this amazing thing in it that will truly change everything. It’s called my middle finger, and I know you’ve never seen anything like it before. From the way she’s talked, I honestly think she’d be on Skitter’s side. Hell she even owes Skitter a little for making that point about the PRT. Ah well, Tagg, like they say about one of the Carolinas, “Keep fucking that horse.” Just keep on screwing it, Tagg. Maybe THIS time it’ll work out right for you. You Cold War reject. Someone needs to take you aside and shove 99 red balloon animals up your ass to balance out all the worthless hot air in there. Also, your wife is fat and ugly and your daughter is an easy lay for horny Frenchmen. While we’re on the subject of Tagg, here is the official Tagg theme song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrgpZ0fUixs Also, Miss Militia, nice to see you’ve come a long way from being a scared little girl conserving her strength and waiting to make her move while soldiers blow off the heads of your friends. Classy. Geez, you think Skitter’s wrong because of how she got to the conclusion? Don’t make me have to go put on a Flag Smasher costume. Oh Danny boy, nice to see that even when you’re not exactly well-informed, you’ve at least cowboyed up a little bit and are sticking around for your daughter. Just a little disturbing that you’re about as well-informed as someone who fled the city. Haha yes, Denis Leary! rmctagg09 on May 9, 2013 at 00:51 said: Indeed, he is an asshole. Honestly I can’t see how this is a trump card. She isn’t in charge anymore, is a an accessory to genocide with many remaining heroes barely keeping themselves from attacking her, her organization is killing people to protect Cauldron which should make her an even worse villain than Taylor in Tagg’s eyes, and by past statements would agree with Skitter’s idea on the greater good. Either Alexandria is about to do something stupid/out of character, or Tagg made a deal with Miss Militia to try and use this situation to out Cauldron. Maybe Tagg’s just the last guy to know anything about the PRT and Cauldron? It’s possible the reason Miss Militia didn’t like calling in Alexandria is because unlike Tagg, she knows Alexandria’s a lot more in favor of this kind of deal. … that’s disturbingly possible, if he wasn’t in town for Echidna. Wasn’t he there for the meeting with Mr./Mrs. Dragon? I suppose it’s possible Miss Useless didn’t bother to tell Tagg that Alexandria would be more likely to support Taylor’s plan, and just hates that she has to use her help. That just means he knows that Alexandria is Costa-Brown, not that the Triumvirate is in thrall to an extradimensional cabal of mad scientists. Tagg is really quite sure that Alexandria won’t agree with Skitter… Her history implies just how much she thinks of having normal humans in charge. “Calle was saying..” Missing period to the ellipsis. “Dinah Calvert. ” Alcott. “I’ve invested in them if I didn” missing comma. What!! I thought Dinah was really Coils daughter! Noooooooooooo!!!!!!! That’s just what the Typo demons WANTED you to think! Dun Dun Dunnnnnnn! I actually thought they were going to summon Contessa of all people there for a second. It’d make more sense than getting all bent up about Alexandria. That’s actually how I knew it wasn’t Contessa — nobody in Brockton Bay would actually recognize Contessa except those with direct ties to Cauldron. Totally thought that too. Although for some reason I had it in my head that she was called ‘The Countess’. I’m not entirely certain how that happened. Self-translating brain? And the first words out of Taylor’s mouth would be:- 1. “How’s the eye?” 2. “Been in contact with Cauldron lately?” 3. “Kneel.” 4. “First things first, fire the Douche beside you.” 5. “Go fuck yourself you mass murdering piece of Cauldron shit!” 6. You a fan of Lisa “Left Eye” Lopez? 7. Glad to see you put on some clothes since the last time I saw you. 8. Hey, remember that time I helped point out that we needed a PRT and possibly helped stave off mass defection? 9. If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine. 10. Good to see you. The two balls were here, so I was just waiting for the one-eyed wonder weasel to show up. ….snicker Look, it’s kinda a tense situation, so if you could keep one eye on my dad here, and one eye on Reveen on May 9, 2013 at 00:49 said: 11. “Well then, I guess I just don’t give a shit.” Then Taylor rips out her spine. Taylor wins! Fatality! I personally find her more likely to chocke herself on Alexandria’s good eye. There is only one C in choke… You mean Taylor’s going to choke the one-eyed monster? I thought she and Grue were finished. shoot, for a moment I thought I was reading Require:Cookie. Wrong Taylor! lol. 12. “mother of douchetagg…” drps nonexistent Mickey mouse coffe mug. 13. Not the first time you were here in a flash. 14. Finally, someone who can see more of the picture than Tagg. 15. Tagg, you’re it. 16. So you just came in to take the heat for this cluster fuck or what? 17. What exactly motivated you to name yourself after a place best known for a burnt library anyway? 18. I’m sure you get asked this a lot, but how exactly does sex work out with the superstrength and all? 19. (sarcasm) Yep, you sure have me beaten now, Tagg. (end sarcasm) 20. Ah, Alexandria. Come to join my team then? 1. I wonder who alexandria’s replacement is. Know it’s a girl…piggot? 2. Chance that calle has a power=? 3. Is calle’s name pronounced CALL or CAI-YEH? He is Latino, so the second one seems correct. 4. Would be a great time for an s-class threat to show up. 5. Was murder included in the list of crimes that Danny read? I mean, was it updated in the past hour or so? 6. Will yamada ever spill anyone’s secrets? 7. Just because they bought the land around the portal on this side doesn’t mean that they own the land on the other side. 8. Dad dies eventually, leading to second trigger event for Taylor. 9. Could calle work for cauldron? 10. Skitter feigns pregnancy to get her into a lower class jail. 11. Dock workers might rally under Danny to support Taylor. 12. What would happen if music head Simurgh met suicidal cherish? 13. Are we ever going to get an uber pointless Atlas interlude? 14. Do parahumans recurr through time? Demigods, gods, etc. 15. Could cauldron have a way to send their creations back in time to lead to legends of monsters? 1. Wouldn’t be Piggot. Even though Regent didn’t take her, she’d still likely be considered compromised. 4. It’d be too convenient. 6. You remember Eidolon’s evaluation of her, right? I don’t think so. 9. I don’t think so, but you never know. 10. Eh, I don’t see that as likely. Especially because they’d probably be able to find out the truth real easily. And they’d suspect a trap from the start, anyways. 11. I’ll bet a lot of workers already support Taylor. If the lunchroom scene is anything to go by, it’s possible that anywhere from 16%-33% of the city supports her. (Accounting for the fact that younger people are probably more likely to be in favor of a villain, than hold to traditional opinions. On the other hand, the Undersiders have also helped a lot of adults. 13. That’d be kinda, ehem, pointless, so I wouldn’t bet on it. 15. The powers in the Wormverse seem to be limited enough to keep full-on time travel off the table. Not even the Endbringers or Scion get that. 15. There was a mention of a guy with time-travel powers a couple chapters back. The leader of the Adepts, I think. Epoch, I think. The simple fact of all the adults in Skitter’s territory showing her respect not fear speaks for itself, IMO. qwerty77753 on May 9, 2013 at 00:55 said: Ho boy, the action just doesn’t stop now does it? Now for more thoughts -Good to see Danny taking Skitter’s side, despite everything. While I assume the plan was to get Danny to go against her daughter, I don’t think Tagg was banking on it, so this might not put that big of a hiccup in his plans. Its also nice to see Danny sticking around, and he might finally be apart of the action for once -The Wards and MM seems to exist in limbo right now in terms of their loyalty. They make it pretty evident that they seriously do not like Skitter, but at the same time really can’t stand the PRT or Tagg in particular. As of what happens to them, whether they stay or leave, is really going to be up in the air. If the Undersiders do attack and Flechette is with them, would be really interesting to see how it plays out -Yay, Sierra’s back in the story! Always felt her send off (quitting without so much as a word or real scene) was lacking. Really hope she stays relevant to the plot from now own, since it is technically her that owns the land around the portal now. Maybe she can join up with Forest and Charlotte and become the Three (insert-name-of-bug-that-is-related-to-“Musketeers”) -I’m confused by Tagg’s move to call in Alexandria. At first I thought that they may have been bringing in Contessa, given her description, but Alexandria? What real purpose does she serve? Why did they “had to” call her, despite MM and the Wards obvious objection and hatred for her? How can she get involved with the discussion, not like she was that involved to begin with. Is she there to try and discredit Skitter, through some nasty words or rebuke claims against the PRT, like their involvement with Cauldron? Maybe she is also just there to talk Skitter down, maybe draw parallels between herself and Skitter, both trying to achieve peace/ safety/ moral goals by doing really bad things. Although, in the end, Skitter tried to defend Alexandria, and Tagg might not know about this. Any ideas as to where this might go? Maybe Tagg’s just a moron? I know, mind-blowing possibility there. Tagg’s a moron? Mind=blown But really, unless Tagg has a super secret plan that is not even remotely evident now, it makes no real sense to bring Alexandria in. A superior who may actually support the other side? Might as well bring in a gun to shot your foot while at it. One really, REALLY far off possibility is that Tagg is somehow banking on Alexandria siding with Skitter, spill the beans on Alexandria/ Cauldron, and death via association will set in. Eddie on May 9, 2013 at 01:44 said: I suppose it’s not impossible that he brings her in as an example of why capes should not be in charge of the PRT. If Alexandria does side with Skitter, Tagg could conceivably spin that to show that cape+authority=evil. Or probably something else entirely, because wildbow is an evil genius. Wildbow, you forced me to start writing a superhero story. You beautiful man you, I’ve been too uncreative lately. Feel free to let the Worm collective know when it gets to a point you feel ok letting us read it. Hey. hey. Maybe he knew about Alexandria. Maybe he’s Doormaker? I mean, he’s certainly deaf, blind, and dumb enough to the real world…. I think that Vista’s outburst is the result of not knowing the full story. Taylor did not engineer Flechette’s defection, despite signalling that she did. Then again it is on par with the story for the Wards to hate Skitter based on incomplete and/or wrong information. Kim on May 9, 2013 at 08:39 said: May not be Tagg’s move. Miss Militia, for all she’s being a good soldier, disagrees with him. And bouncing things up the chain of command is just what you do in the military. Besides, tattletale is capable of having global consequences. Alexandria is here because of her superintelligence. She’s here to negotiate something that makes sense to everyone. 1) Tagg’s gone. 2) Not-Superhumans in charge. NON MILITARY humans in charge. (this is really what Skitter’s been asking for…) 3) “Staged PR Fights” with the Undersiders (and covert, strong help against other villain incursions). Let the PRT show that they’re winning sometimes, guys! But don’t do it so anyone gets hurt, and let the Undersiders keep their rep. 4) Taylor gets assigned to Dragon. Full Time Teammember. (possibly on alpha-testing duty for now). This is my call, if Alexandria wants to keep everything as good as when she stepped in the door, or possibly make it better. Evil Me says: Alexandria has just found her replacement. > Evil Me says: Alexandria has just found her replacement. Umh… that’s what good me said… evil me was more “special Skitter experimented on by Cauldron Interlude by Franz Kafka”. Maybe I should stop watching weird movies before going to bed… I’d like to point out the part where, in discovering Flechette’s defection, Vista asks Tagg if he did anything, and the indication that gives as to the general opinion of their local director. Well I think we can safely conclude Vista will probably never join Skitter and co. The others I could still see happening. But truthfully I think it is inevitable, and worm is it got worse the series, that Cauldron is outed/the PRT gets shut down. Which will simply cause all the heroes to split into independent teams without government oversight/resources. I could see Clockie, Kid Lose, and Vista deciding to form their own team independently in a mirror of the old big three. Oh, yeah, Vista’s not gonna join the Undersiders. But she clearly doesn’t like Tagg’s methods, and wouldn’t put it past him to have done something to aggravate Flechette to the point where she would leave. I think Vista might hate Skitter for being a villain but still doing good while she’s stuck unable to do anything worthwhile as a hero. even her friends turn out to like her better, and go to her- Which ruins Vista’s ability to Team Mom it up, taking away her societal role within the team on top of everything else. Opticon on May 9, 2013 at 01:09 said: My first thought is “Are Tagg and Miss Militia even cleared to know this conversation is happening?” Mrmdubois on May 9, 2013 at 01:25 said: Miss Militia was there when Alexandria was outed as working for Cauldron. So I imagine she is, don’t know about Tagg. He gave himself the clearance. Also, Worm got a small mention over at Grrl Power as a story on the guy’s wishlist over there. Something about preferring to read it on his kindle. Pansy. http://www.grrlpowercomic.com/ for anyone looking for a shortcut there. It’s pretty good, just moving pretty slow. I love that webcomic. Its makes me laugh, it’s original, and the main character is quirky. But yeah, it updates so slowly I think it will be years before we actually get to any conflict. Ellert on May 9, 2013 at 09:06 said: Hey we had that already math and anvil ok we didn t actually see it but it happened and what about the bank. Though granted it takes its time. You read that too PG is there no save haven in the internet? There’s always villainousintent.wordpress.com I suppose. Though if it were fixable, it’d be nice if in the mobile version of the site (at least with Apple products), you could tap the top of the screen to insta-scroll to the top, like with most other sites and apps. Can’t really complain though, because it’d only be saving me a few moments of scrolling. Jakinbandw on May 9, 2013 at 06:56 said: Atomic Web. I have mine set with gestures that instantly scroll to the top, bottom, and bring up a neat scroll bar. It’s full screen, and you can lock it in landscape position. Awesome, wasn’t really expecting a chapter today! Ok, so they brought in Alexandria. Here’s the thing, she is the strongest para human working for the PRT the Undersiders have absolutely nothing they can do against her in terms of damage. The only possible exception is Grue because of his power mimicking, but powers he copies aren’t as effective as the original. So they might be hoping to use her as the trump card, give her permission to go lethal and go to town and the Undersiders lose. The part that’s not pretty will be Taylor’s reaction to that I’m guessing. Of course, hopefully, they are underestimating Alexandria’s past history and this is all about to go wahooney shaped on Tagg. Because as others pointed out, Alexandria could have plenty of good reasons to want to work with Taylor. They discovered Siberian’s weakness, she made Lung her Bitch, she figured out a way to cut Noelle in half/kill an Eidolon clone, destroyed so many dragon suits that Dragon decided to retreat, and gave the 9 a black eye. Tagg practically admitted that he outed her because they couldn’t beat them. Going by their record, Alexandria has to know that she might not win the fight if she took them on. Yeah, that, and Tagg’s comment about the possibility of the Undersiders becoming a threat of S9 (at least pre-S9000) pretty much answer the question from the thread last week about the Undersiders’ threat level. Definitely an A, with even the possibility of becoming an S. Anzer'ke on May 9, 2013 at 21:05 said: Citrine. This is all. Heck they just need to stop her from drawing breath, that’s not too tall an order. I wonder if we can get some idea what other villains around the country are thinking and their relations with local PRT groups after Skitter’s outing. That might come up if the next Endbringer attack is within the scope of the story, but I’m interested to see how the greater world views that particular fuckup of Tagg right now. I still can’t believe how stupid Tagg is. He knows how dangerous the Endbringers are and has personally seen the aftermath. They NEED the villains help to fight them and he broke the unwritten rules. He may have actually broken the truce completely and no villains show up. I wanted Taylor to ask him if any Villains have decided to to use his tactics by outing heroes/going after their families when he mentioned Alaska. Ooh yeah. Tagg like to talk about precedent, but what kind of precedent does it set when the PRT publicly outs one of the most recognizable capes in the country? They are rules for a reason. Taylor and the Undersiders might not go after families, but it would be bitter irony if another villain killed his wife. Loki-L on May 9, 2013 at 01:35 said: Alexandria is certainly going to make a difference. The presence of her dad might prevent Taylor from mentioning some things that cauldron would not want to become public knowledge, but she could at the very least subtly remind her of them. Start with some small talk. Ask her about they eye being replaced and how she looks much better now than the last time they met. Stuff that is just a harmless enquiry about her health, but contains the reminder that Taylor saw her in her most vulnerable state like she truly is, with fire having purged away all her coverings disguises. Remind her that it was Skitter who spoke up for her at the end and also that Skitter saw clones of her and legend die. The threat from Alexandria is far less than Tagg probably expected. A worse factor might be that Alexandria has some truth detection powers going if I remember correctly. This would make it hard to play poker with her. If worse comes to worse there is still one trump left to play for Taylor. She sensed Alexandria’s reaction to the other world that was no Earth Aleph, something that she likely wants to keep secret… On the plus side. Alexandria can overrule Tagg, she is less likely to be opposed to parahumans in charge of the PRT on principle and she still has cauldron’s agenda going on in the background that seemed to require a city run by parahumans…. With a little luck something interrupts them before the deadline can run out. A threat from the other side of the portal, an A-Class threat approaching or something. > A worse factor might be that Alexandria has some truth detection powers going if I remember correctly. This would make it hard to play poker with her. Not powers — just talent. Eidetic memory makes it easy to learn skills, and reading and interpreting microexpressions is a skill. Since there are no universal gestures that indicate people are lying, it has to be through her learning ability. Study a person’s reactins long enough to get a sense of when they’re lying, same as learning tells in poker. That’s also why any shows that bring on some person who can supposedly read people just to study a clip of someone in an interview is lying to your face. Even a lie detector test can be fooled by strategic use of the human ass. No, not kidding on that one. Apparently, squeezing your butt muscles during the control questions throws off the readings enough so that if you have a reaction to the questions you lie on, it won’t stand out enough to give you away. Alternatively, you can believe the lie yourself, just be a really good liar, or be a sociopath. After this chapter Tagg has officially taken Armsmaster’s title of biggest asshat in worm. He is still in the running for stupidest “good guy” as well. Most evil “hero” is either Alexandria or Eidolon after the number man interlude showed some of the extent of the crimes they are accessory to. I will wait until next chapter before I declare Miss Militia the most useless hero in the story. Thought of a few new categories. We have weakest hero, most deluded hero, craziest hero, and hero we most feel sorry for. Biggest Jerk/Asshat: Tagg Most Evil Hero: Alexandria/Eidolon Most Useless Hero: Miss Militia when she didn’t help the Undersiders fight the 9. Weakest hero: Kid Lose, with Dovetail close behind. Craziest hero: Shadowstalker is till reigning champion Most deluded hero: Assault Her most feel sorry for: Panacea, with Vista pretty close after losing another ward. The weakest hero is more likely the fatty that Taylor l eft to die in the leviathan battle. Kid Win wouldn’t get weakest hero IMO. I think once he finds his niche he’ll be pretty good. And how could Garrotte not get the ‘saddest’ award? And then of course, the horrific thought process of shipping Tagg and Piggot. Would that make them ‘Taggot’? I vote Piggagg. ‘cuz you know it would. No, if the couple was going to be called Piggagg, it’d be a romance between Piggot and Imp’s sock. I don’t think that pairing works — look at Interlude 20 (Donation Bonus #1). Piggot’s opinion of Tagg might not be as low as ours, but it’s not favorable. Tagg’s also married. I mean, you can have an otp if you want, but still.. I don’t think so. That sounds a little too close to a more derogatory word, I think. I feel like Alexandria’s loyalty to Cauldron is in many ways parallel to Taylor’s loyalty to the Undersiders — she’s caught between her moral instincts and those she sees as her allies. The major difference is that Cauldron is generally evil (chaotic, netural, or lawful I’m not sure) where the Undersiders are generally chaotic neutral. Cauldron definitely seem Lawful. Peter O on May 9, 2013 at 14:07 said: Nope, Neutral. They follow or break the laws as they see fit. Indigo on May 9, 2013 at 02:32 said: Well, this sould be a very intresting talk. As an aside, how revealing is it that Tagg’s first move to rally the morale of his Wards is to warn them that a deal like this… could slow down their careers. Because that’s what this REALLY means, in his words – potential career dead ends. Not an appeal to their duty, or their cause, or the people they could save… an appeal to their career hopes. How very odd. Miss Militia is perfectly confident that there will be no war – implying that Alexandria is going to broker a solution. MM hated having to call A in – because MM believes in the system, despite its imperfections, for ‘nothing touched by human hands could be’, but there’s a reason she wears the flag, and proudly. Alexandria subverted all of that for more than a decade, and whether she comes as Costa-Brown or Alexandria, MM has to feel a particularly deep betrayal there. Made worse by being complicit this time around – MM was part of calling in Alexandria, and there’s going to be another (in MM’s eyes) corrupt bargain as a result of that. MM likely even knows that she’ll benefit from this – as Armsmaster said, she was always better at the politics, and her otherwise puzzling silence through all this makes a lot more sense if she knows she doesn’t need to take action to stop a war, or rein in Tagg, or indeed protect Taylor. All she has to do is watch the country she loves and the system she’s sworn herself to… be betrayed just a little bit more. And she hasn’t been able to find a better solution, mostly because she agrees with Taylor (and nearly every other cape involved) that this can’t go on as it is. What sort of solution? Alexandria will spend whatever she has to do whatever she must – Skitter most definitely included. Short of finding out that the misfiled prayer to Dragon from Panacea was ‘don’t send Skitter here and I won’t kill the world’ (in which case we’ll find out after things go to hell), Skitter’s unlikely to go the Birdcage – too much potential use in her. And how interesting was it that Skitter recognized herself in Alexandria, in the ripples around them as people recognize them? Alexandria… may need an apprentice. Pretty sure the Wards don’t love Skitter, not even Clockblocker (though some certainly ship that). Respect her, oh yes. Fear her, yes indeed. She’s undefeated when she stays to fight, elusive when she doesn’t, and even with her captive this feels like she’s calling the shots… like they’re losing. Again. The Wards have taken better than 85% casualties in the three or so months covered and the Undersiders… just keep rising to power. Demonstrably, if they go up against the S9, the Undersiders all live, and the S9 experiences… attrition. This is a recipe for nightmare fuel. That 85% Ward loss rate alone would cause considerable stress. Aegis, Gallant, Kid Win, Vista, Clockblocker, Shadow Stalker, Browbeat – 7 team members, initially. Casualties since then? Aegis, Gallant, Browbeat, Shadow Stalker, Chariot, Flechette – arguably Weld, but let’s leave him out of this calculation: 6/7 = 85.7%. Casualties to the Protectorate team proper: Armsmaster, Battery, Dauntless, and very nearly Triumph. Let’s not even talk about what happened to New Wave, which is functionally annihilated. The Wards alone will have been through 70%+ casualties in about three months: these are the people they’ve been growing up with, for years, their childhood friends, the only proper peers they have, and their foxhole buddies all in one. And they’ve been taking… casualties. People have held together through worse in wartime, and the remaining Wards are managing, but that alone would make them more than jumpy. Besides, the Undersiders (in the Wards’ eyes) can claim credit for Shadow Stalker, Flechette, Glory Girl, and Panacea (possibly Armsmaster, but let’s err on the side of caution). Leviathan, with Defiant, Gallant, Aegis, Browbeat and Shielder is worse – well, no shame in not being as big a threat as an Endbringer. No comfort, either. The S9, bogeymen that they are… fall short on the cape count. (In fairness, if you start counting civilian deaths, the Undersiders are a very distant third to Leviathan and the S9). The Wards have no reason to love Skitter, and every reason to offer her that admixture of fear and respect that Machiavelli prescribed – and they fight her anyway. Because they’re heroes, and that’s what they do. Plus, and Skitter may not notice or appreciate this since she apparently has enough proprioception (and I use the word advisedly) with her bugs that she doesn’t even notice them as a foreign presence anymore, but being swarmed under by biting stinging crawling bugs is something that the Wards have all lived through, and in all probability all of them have nightmares about it. Regularly. Triumph certainly must, though he’s no Ward. I just wanted to quote it. On a completely unrelated note, I will quote Hedey, I mean Hedley, Lamarr from the movie Blazing Saddles: “Men, you are about to embark on a great crusade to stamp out runaway decency in the west. Now you men will only be risking your lives, whilst I will be risking an almost certain Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor.” Y’know, I’ve really started to lose sympathy to the Wards. Not that they’re bad at all, but that there’s only enough to go around. If I have to choose between the biracial lesbian couple who have lost loved ones and are willing to buck the system for a chance at love and the pack of wishy-washy white kids skulking in their high tech HQ and blaming everything on the Undersiders so they can nurse their victim complex and avoid facing up to their own faults… Where was I going with this? Oh yeah, shut the hell up Vista. You’ve had the lucky break to end all lucky breaks only a few arcs ago, and it’s partially in thanks to the person you’re cussing at half a building away. Atleast nut up like Clockie and do it in person. I might be being a bit unfair, but these kids remind me of shitty YA protagonists who spends half the story sitting around in a sympathy echo chamber instead of, y’know, doing things. > I might be being a bit unfair, but these kids remind me of shitty YA protagonists who spends half the story sitting around in a sympathy echo chamber instead of, y’know, doing things. I think we have a new entry for the “problems with the Wards organization” list. You might 🙂 We rarely see what the heroes are doing, that does not mean they’re idle. According to their interludes they were really swamped with hero work, even if the city is getting better they’re probably still doing double shifts. Besides try to view it from a 13 year old point of view: her friends and comrades keep gettin either offed or “turned”. She might not have liked Shadow Stalker but that’s three in a row nonetheless, and all connected to Skitter in some way. But it’s never going to occur to Vista that there’s a reason all this is happening other than “oh, those evil Undersiders” does she ever think that Stalker may have brought things upon herself? Or that Flechette made her own decision and wasn’t turned like Skitter is the goddamn Emperor or something? Acknowledge that the horrific serial killers with a master manipulator at the helm may have had a bit more to do with Panacea and Glory Girl than the teenage bank robbers? Weld and now Clockblocker are the only Wards who seem capable of seeing past their nose and thinking about things professionally. They need to balance their view of the Undersiders with both the good and bad. See them as people making decisions instead of Sith Lords or some shit. They have no business acting as arbitrators of justice when their vision is clouded by fear and paranoia. I know she’s 13, but for Christ sake, why has no one tired to set the Wards straight on this? Oh right, Piggot and Tagg are jackboots who like their soldiers nice and indoctrinated. As you said, indoctrination plays a part. But I find she’s actually quite sensible in blaming Skitter. Look at it her way: Regents almost suicides Shadow Stalker. After the big echidna fight in which Skitter had a long semi-private discussion with Weld he retires. Then Flechette, who has probably vented about the evil Skitter turning her friend Parian, to the point that she’s all Darth Vader now… get seduced by the dark side too. Seriously, not having the full picture I would blame Skitter too. Once is happenstance, twice coincidence, four times is definitely enemy action. Most of those conclusions are ones reached by only looking at the situations at the moment, filtered through bias, without any attempt at getting at answers or questioning what she’s told like Clockie did. Basing your view on things entirely on your fears and preconceptions doesn’t seem even remotely sensible to me. If she actually blames Skitter for Weld leaving I’ll be particularly annoyed with her for not talking to her friend, and anyone who believes that someone was seduced to evil like in Star Wars should be slapped upside the head. It’s not like she has nothing to blame Skitter for, but I find this crap pretty disappointing coming from someone who’s supposed to be empathic and smart. She’s basing her assumptions on avaiable data I’d say. And you remember Flechette’s various rants about Skitter seducing Parian? That is the opinion of what Vista would percieve as an informed (as in, her girlfriend, ofc she’s informed) and senior teammate and (maybe) friend. It would weight a lot. Weld is mainly icong on the cake but it’s another doubt piled on top of facts, informed opinions (from her point of view), and quite sensible deductions (with the data she has avaiable). Btw, let’s not forget that Tattletale is a recognized mistress of mindscrew, and Skitter was considered a very good mindscrewer too. I’ve got a lot of sympathy for the Wards. We mostly see them when they fight Skitter – and by this point, they’ve got a deeply conditioned flinch reflex there. Clockblocker’s recognition of Skitter at the high school comes when she’s cornered and she smiles… because he recognizes her recognizing that they’re afraid she’ll pull some surprise out of nowhere. Again. As, indeed, she does. We really only see them fighting twice without the Undersiders in play, either as foes or allies – against the Travellers, over the corpses the S9 left as their calling card, and Flechette’s abortive patrol with Shadow Stalker. Taking those as a pattern? The Wards spend long hours patrolling and stopping unpowered crime, and every so often fight villains… and the villain fights are usually what Tattletale was calling ‘high-powered games of cops and robbers.’ The Travellers didn’t kill anyone, though Ballistic and Sunfire surely could have. But normally, they just don’t take casualties: given tinker and other cape medical support, if they lose someone, it’s usually to high school graduation. These days they’re taking a staggering casualty rate, and despite all those sacrifices… they’re still losing. The Undersiders have the city. Remember when patrol was long hours hanging out with friends or at least peers, doing good work? Remember the last time Shadow Stalker went on patrol alone? Wonder if you’re next? And they still go out. Point being, they do ‘nut up’ – regularly, and go out and fight the good fight. An expression of sorrow at a friend’s betrayal – and it was a betrayal, Flechette’s turn to Parian wouldn’t mean so much if she wasn’t giving up so much: her friends, her purpose in life hitherto – is hardly inappropriate. The Wards are heroes. Children also, some of them more than others, and embedded in an organization and society that is far from perfect… but heroes nonetheless. People who do their best to be their best selves (with occasional success), who take their powers and pledge them to the protection and service of mankind. There’s a reason Taylor wanted to join their ranks – they are heroes, and not just in the cape sense of the word. Of course, in the world of Worm, the heroes – and all humanity – are slowly losing the fight. But the heroes don’t give up – that’s one of the ways you can tell they’re heroes. And that’s something I find sympathetic, and indeed admirable. Isn’t that one of the reasons we like Taylor so much – her stubborn refusal to give up? wildbow on May 9, 2013 at 16:57 said: Upvoting/liking this comment. Surprised and grateful. Also looking forward to getting this on kindle come the day, cf. Shadow Unit. I’m with wildbow — great comment, agreed on both points. The only time I can think of in-story that doesn’t fit the pattern you described was the final takedown of Bakuda and Lung, presuming the Wards were even present for it, and we don’t have any information on how that fight went down. But yeah, I’m absolutely agreed. The purpose of the Wards was not to turn children into stone-cold warriors capable of going toe-to-toe with the most dangerous supervillains on the planet, but to be a place to gather tomorrow’s superheroes and give them training on how to be superheroes. And honestly, the classes Clockie hates so much are a crucial part of that, because you don’t stop criminals by beating them up, you stop them by arresting them and getting them convicted of the crimes they committed, and there are specific legal requirements you have to meet to attain that objective. Nearly everything the Wards have had to do since the story began has been them going above and beyond what has been expected of them. Because they are heroes, and when they are needed, they step up, ready or not. We do know that Clockblocker and Vista got the credit for stopping Bakuda’s superbomb with their powers – but that fight almost certainly had MM, Armsmaster, Velocity (missed his death to Leviathan in the initial post – nothing on screen, but he’s on the memorial), Assault, Battery,and Dauntless as the front line, with the Wards handling thugs… and Lung was probably still blind. That’s risky, but not that risky. Remember Taylor wading through unpowered ABB thugs after her confrontation with Lung in the warehouse? That’s more likely what the Wards were up to in that fight. Yeah, pretty damn good assessment of them. Looking back this is pretty much spot on. Though my main worry is how much the PRT is fucking up their development, it seemed pretty clear to me that neither Piggot nor Tagg gave a pale shadow of a shit about fostering the next generation of heroes. The Wards are just pawns on the chestboard to them, and they’re becoming afraid and paranoid because of their mismanagement, or perhaps they like them that way, make the enemy seem like some dark and terrible, so they’ll be less likely to ask question. Something that I still think they should be doing, Tagg’s going to be leading them into dangerous situation after dangerous situation until they either stop letting him or they end up dead. On a macro, non-street fighting level I have reservations about calling the heroes in the right so long as Cauldron is still around. The organization would have to be obliterated before they can build a superhero organization that truly lives up to that title. I’m still on the fence on whether the PRT ought to be burned to the ground too. Yeah, yeah Endbringers. But I can hope that whatever happens by the end will make the PRT unnecessary I also should note that there have been several instances of heroes referring to themselves as soldiers, and from the PRT’s methods leads me to believe that they actively want superheroes to operate as qa hardened, unquestioning army. > On a macro, non-street fighting level I have reservations about calling the heroes in the right so long as Cauldron is still around. For a moment I was wondering if there were any capes who left the Protectorate/Wards prior to Echidna because they figured out that it was in the thrall of Cauldron. Sorry, s/”For a moment I was”/”Now I’m”. Originally I was going to have something about how many individual members of the hero teams are heroes, but you specifically acknowledged that in your comment already so I cut it. >Yeah, yeah Endbringers. But I can hope that whatever happens by the end will make the PRT unnecessary. Scion’s still under orders to kill the Endbringers now, right? You happened to say the right combination of words to break through some cynicism temporarily. As the CoH community used to say, “A hero never quits.” espionagedb7.deviantart.com/art/Save-City-of-Heroes-326891669 holds up a torch Not gonna stop me from wishing Tagg gets Midnightered, I tell you what. I don’t think he should get Midnightered though. Too quick and not enough pain. This is such a great comment that I can’t come up with anything to say in reply. Your points are all really strong. A Cat on May 9, 2013 at 12:20 said: The biggest oddity of it is that, well…they know that everything is going to end. Tagg is trying to play the long game, which would actually be…well, not shrewd, exactly, but a decent call – if there was a long game to play. But there isn’t; he can’t can’t count on the PRT bouncing back in two years because he simply doesn’t have two years to bounce back in. That’s part of why the mention of careers is so odd. What does it matter if, in the long run, the Protectorate/PRT lose credibility for working with villains, and this shuts down the careers of all involved? As someone once said, in the long run, everyone is dead. He was talking about how thinking only of the long term is foolish and too easy a task, but in this case it’s a bit more literal than that. Bet you he doesn’t believe in precognition. No, he clearly believes in it – he was trying to play hardball to get Dinah to give him information. He just doesn’t get that things have changed; he’s consciously aware of the impending apocalypse but isn’t allowing little things like ‘facts’ to change his behavior. To quote another someone – “No. Not even in the face of Armageddon. Never compromise.” I’d almost want to make a comment about the whole political theory of this – that the idea of sovereignty, the idea that nation-states have the monopoly on violence, simply no longer works.Instead there’s a mutual ‘unwritten rules’ consensus, the codes of conduct that make it possible for capes to come together in the face of larger threats. Governments, military – they can’t handle that truth. Definitely an interesting chapter, though the end leaves me wanting more. I’m not actually sure that Miss Militia should be considered useless here. For the majority of the chapter, she’s being criticized by commentators for not being more proactive in the negotiations. But why should she be? She knows that Alexandria is coming in, someone that outranks both Tagg and Herself. As she says, she’s conserving energy for the real discussion, after Alexandria arrives. (Interestingly, MM comment about a deal with the devil, could apply equally to Skitter and Alexandria) Historically, story wise, she has actually been one of the more effective capes on battles. When skitter clockblocker-trapped elodionclone, MM was the one to kill him (With a Rocket). We know that she has a strong respect for the rule of law, and I could easily see her getting orders on how to deal with the S9 that precluded cooperation with the Undersiders. (been a little while since I read that section though) And while we are getting frustrated at her refusal to make deals with Skitter, She is a hero and Skitter is a Supervillan. Some things just don’t happen easily. I suspect that MM is coming around to some of Skitter’s conclusions, sine she does mention sharing the same concerns about the PRT and the Future. Though Skitter doesn’t know, what Alexandria’s entrance most reminded me of is Grue’s observations of her during his interlude. The fearless stride and sense of certainty about her, even when she is traveling in crowds/ pedestrian areas. I am finding amusement in poor Crucible. Dude has got to be so confused. “What is enchinida?” “Classified” “Why happened?” “sorry, can’t tell you” “Why did you guys just run terrified from the Chief Director?” “Can’t tell you. They’ll kill us. Just run.” I so dearly want more Crucible. He, or she, or it, or they, or whatever this character is — I want to see more. And not just because the TV Tropes page entry for Crucible consists of one sentence of description and one trope — the whole conversation with the “Classified”-chorus makes me really want to know who this person is. …You just want more “Classified!” don’t you. 😛 (I do too, don’t worry.) I can see a Crucible interlude. Dinah Calvert… eh, guess he forced her to marry him. Or at least that’s what I got in my moment of confusion. (Do we even know her age? I just realized I’ve been assuming “around ten”, but without any kind of basis.) Well, it could be after all. Coil did have the money to arrange a marriage someplace where it would be legal (according to wikipedia children are given in marriage at 7 routinely in some places). And he should do it because? This is harder… oh, I got it. While thinking about how to “reward” his employer with the peculiar tastes, and maybe feeling a bit whimsical he asked what chances would be to avert the end of the world if the two of them married, and the answer was positive enough to go with it. Might be because she now inherits enough money/stuff/blackmail material to organize one of the armies she mentioned. Oh, and before everyone’s too much disgusted, even if he married her it does not mean he has touched her at all (besides patting her head ofc). And yes, this clarificaton would have been more useful at the beginning of the text. Speculating on something more relevant: this is out of character for Cauldron. So far it has been pretty clear they must maintain an hands-off approach on the events in Brockton Bay. It does not fit and it’s not because of the portal thing that forced their hand, Tagg called Costa-Brown in before knowing that. Alexandria present is either to try and nudge things towards overt conflict or to put Skitter out of the local picture and smooth thing over like she required. Both would fit with their (inferred) masterplan. In both cases Cauldron might try to recruit her. Either to pair her up with Harbringer (they could name themselves War and Famine at that point), or to try a Kafka-esque experiment. So it’s again down to a coin toss. Miss Militia’s coin is still in the air too. …Why was your first thought marriage instead of typo? ;_; I always give the benefit of the doubt, and take everything as intended at first. I have an overactive imagination and I’m really good at finding excuses, I mean, plausible explanations. But the foremost reason is that the voices tell me to write stuff to screw with your head 😉 I think Dinah’s 12, isn’t she? According to her TVTropes entry, she is. By-the-by, does anyone else think she should be moved out of Coil’s section. You could make a strong case for her belonging in Others, for sure. The only reason I listed her for Coil is because that’s where she was when she was introduced. “As it stands, the Protectorate East-North-East holds Brockton Bay in a specialized state of emergency. It’s a legal wild west, with very little precedent holding things together. Director Tagg reports to his superiors, who report to the United States government.” What if the Undersiders ignore the Brockton Bay PRT and its members completely and proceed to attack key members of the Senate Sub Committee for Parahuman Affairs, bribing &/or blackmailing them to bring political pressure against Tagg instead? Alexandria may be untouchable with her “Hero” rep and Cauldron landmine but Tagg should be expendable in their eyes right? >Implying US senators aren’t already bought HAH. Oh c’mon, isnt it obvious that US senators are already bought by multiple parties before, during and after their time in office? I meant that they haven’t been bought by the Undersiders yet. Shipping thread Danny and Alexandria fall for eachother at first sight. Yay or nay? It couldn’t last — their political philosophies are incompatible. I’m not really sure there. I read Danny as an optimistic idealist and Alexandria as a disillusioned one. His outlook could be positive for her too, since he’s quite down to earth. Glassware on May 9, 2013 at 09:57 said: I ship Danny/Hanna instead. Yaaaaaay Anyone else hoping for a renamed Flechette interlude? theslowblitz on May 9, 2013 at 12:20 said: YESSSS. But at this point, its too soon. Flechette’s interlude wouldn’t introduce us to anything new. Hopefully there’ll be one before the end of the story? Though from what Wildbow has said, it seems the story is already wrapping up, so… Nine or so arcs to go. Plenty of stuff to write about in interludes to the interim. Even though we just saw her in the last interlude, it’d show us what the Undersiders are up to, as well as her thoughts on them now. Of course, the next arc will definitely be showing that anyways, and it would be more of a surprise without a heads up. And then we could even maybe get to see Flechette interact directly with Skitter. What I really want to see, though, is more of Emma and Shadow Stalker now that Skitter’s identity has been revealed. Hahahaha. I just turned on the tv, and they were showing a list of the most popular girls names of 2012. What were the top two? Sophia and Emma. Lost Demiurge on May 9, 2013 at 12:36 said: Alexandria… Hm! I expected the higher ups to get involved at some point, but she appears personally? Hm! Also, good to see Taylor making with the social fu! The land shuffle around the portal is a nice way of turning up pressure, without committing to anything horrible, or crossing any lines. Heh, Sierra. Who’d a thunk it? And Danny… Oh Danny. You are such a good man, a good father, and you put it best… Some of the worst qualities and more of the better ones. Oddly enough, I’m seeing that Tagg is really a paper tiger when you get down to it. He’s a jerk, true, and he talks tough, but he’s not going to cross any extreme lines. Especially not now Alexandria’s here. Miss Militia… A lot of people calling her out for lack of spine, or being useless, but no. This is a tricky situation, and she’s right in that there doesn’t seem to be ANY good choice that won’t compromise her and her team in some way. There is someone else available to make the call, and so she’ll let them do it. Honestly, Taylor holding her up and supporting her as a leader kind of bound her hands… If she supported Skitter, then it would look self-serving, and she’d lose the respect she needs to lead. If she supported Tagg, then she’d be giving up on solving problems that she AGREES with Taylor need to be solved. Miss Militia is thinking ahead. By staying silent, she can react the way she needs to to the new situation, wait until the choice becomes simpler and more visible. She keeps herself a viable resource for when it is best for her to act. Save Taylor? Well, she could try, but Taylor’s determined to martyr herself one way or the other, here. Boot Tagg? Why? If it was done with corruption, then it’d just be undone later, and MM would lose the ability to influence future issues. Support Tagg? Gh. No. Guy’s an ass. And he’s WRONG. So when the PRT crumbles, she’d lose influence from those who remembered her supporting Tagg. Heroes are better at being reactive, than proactive. Villains? Vice-versa, generally. That’s one of the big genre conventions, and the Protectorate’s bought into it wholesale… Which is one of the reasons they’ve suffered so in the previous crises. One of the reasons the wards don’t get the training they need to optimize their tactics and power combinations. But it’s all moot, since Alexandria’s here, and the ball’s in her court now, and I do NOT know which way it is going to go. It is going to be a surprise, a likely glorious surprise either way! Wildbow, you are GOOD at this. I cannot wait until Saturday! I agree with you on MM. I don’t think she’s useless; she just know when her actions wouldn’t have any real effect in the long run. In regards to MM i disagree. You are talking about her losing support if she acted. That could be true enough if she did one of the things you listed however you are forgetting that the same is possible with nonaction. If i was skitter and hoped for a bit of moral support in this situation i d pretty much reevaluate my trusting in her after her doing and saying exactly zip so far. Same if i was in her team for gods sake he is talking about wanting to shoot a 16-year old girl or taking Dinah whos age i don t know atm prisoner because she refuses to do what he wants and there is not so much as a word against it? I m not sure i d trust her to have my back if i witnessed that. Well i hope you are right regardless and she would have done something if he had attempted to make true his threats or we simply haven t heard or seen her prepare something but when that something comes it is awesome and just because i d much prefer the MM i was picturing before Skitter was imprisoned. sarah penguin on May 9, 2013 at 12:56 said: Oooh Alexandria! Truthseeker on May 9, 2013 at 14:39 said: I’m torn between thinking that the concept of eminent domain is a lot more ugly and powerful than Taylor seems to think, and then thinking that, well, maybe that’s only a problem for little people with no money, which the Undersiders aren’t, really. ….It’s a really cynical morning, I guess. Then we fight cynicism with cynicism. I mean, there’s no Iraq war in the Wormverse, but the U.S. has been screwing over other countries for a long time. It’s practically an American tradition. So with an entire other world at stake and a very limited number of portals around, I figure the rest of the world is going to put a lot of pressure on the U.S. to not seize it. Other countries want to get through there too, and I figure they’d rather work with supervillains than the U.S. government. I had a similar thought when the government almost condemned the city. I thought at the time that Taylor would have a 2nd trigger event that made her VERY powerful, and she declared the city her own country after doing something big for the world at large. The US refuses to recognize it, and then all its major allies recognize it, and now she has to run her own country similar to Doctor Doom. Man.. seeing Taylor raise her chin and close her eyes to take the hit.. if Taylor hearing Danny say he didn’t want her friends running things was a punch in the gut, seeing her expecting violent retribution from him must have been a kick in the nuts. Though I wonder how little Danny knows, he was supportive, but didn’t show the kind of support I’d expect for a guy whose daughter has gone to bat the way Taylor has. Note she didn’t actually receive violent retribution,so it had the reverse effect. Maybe skitter will manage to escape through the portal….time jump…comes back with new uber bugs from some part of the other world’s slightly(I think) different ecosystem. Imagine if she raided the jungles of the other world… ALSO (and I’m sorry for just bringing up stuff from other chapters, since I just started reading recently), I know at the moment it’s not possible, but what ever happened to that Darwin’s spider suit she wanted back in 1.2? I know she got the spiders from Coil, so whatever happened to making the suit? Not nearly enough spiders. Takes tens of thousands to produce sufficient silk, and even with the black widows, she’s been using a lot of them to make cords to bring into fights. Ah. Yeah, I did consider the possibility that she just hasn’t been able to breed a large enough supply of them yet. Though it would be cool if she eventually did set up that spider workshop she once mentioned – but with the Darwin spider instead of black widows. I was just curious since it had been about ten arcs since any mention of that. No need for jungles. Locusts were endemic to North America back around the divergence point- it was modern humans who eliminated them. eduardo on May 9, 2013 at 15:46 said: There is someone missing in this game. Dragon. IF Alexandria wants to do a little job in Taylor`s mind and/or deal with her by sending her to Cauldron the only escape will be if dragon gets into the game. Of course, sooner or latter Dragon/Defiant will talk with Taylor. Oh, by the way, like another guy said in the last comments section: Better yet: Puta que o pariu, isto esta ficando cada VEZ MELHOR!!! %%######%%%%, this is getting better and better!!! Dragon might still be recovering from Armsmaster’s hack. She might still be impaired enough not to be able to speak. Or she may be seing it all through the security cameras of the building and one of her much improved armors may be coming soon. Wait !!! A Cutlass? Why did Miss Militia make a cutlass? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cutlass A weapon associated with pirates and … bucaneers !!! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buccaneer#Legal_status Legal or semi legal thiefs. Yes, Miss Militia is making a point here with her pointy things. Hobbes on May 9, 2013 at 18:28 said: Or, if she wasn’t consciously controlling what it turned into, her passenger is. I like to think it was Miss Militia who was making the point, though. Clever! A thought I just had on why Sierra was willing to re-enter the picture: Skitter turning herself in changed her mind about the morality of working for her cause. anonymus on May 9, 2013 at 20:40 said: thanks for the new chapter + thanks for it beeing a normal chapter not an interlude Chime on May 9, 2013 at 21:00 said: Skitter is not religious; she has already said so. She’s also not very philosophical. Not that she’s had much time for introspective musings on justice and morality. Yet, all of her decisions in the story are based on keeping up this facade of hers – that she’s a good and moral person. Except she’s not? Why does she believe this so intently when she’s already admitted in the past before, that her “strivings for goodness” were just a skin she wore over her real desires. When she joined the Undersiders, she wanted to oust them out to become a Hero, but that dream died the moment they became her friends and she realized how much she liked being with them. She continued to try and justify to herself that she could turn them in and that she was doing everything she was for some “greater good” – but she didn’t. She harassed, bullied, and injured people and continued to do so in order to preserve her new found freedom and friends. Not to say that Skitter doesn’t deserve those things, but it’s undeniable that she’s not a “moral” person. A “moral” person; whose morals are unshakable and founded in some kind of philosophy or religion, would have if not turned in the Undersiders, been level with them close to the beginning. Some moral people wouldn’t even try to backstab the do-badders (why? Well duh. Look at Skitter early on in the story, betraying her friends made her into her worst enemy personified – Emma). So why does Sktiter, in this chapter still, a million or so words in, cling to the false pretense of morality when she bows her head and says she’ll submit to prison/birdcage for her crimes? Why does Tagg say she is a “moral” person? She isn’t. Tagg is an idiot. Skitter is thinking about the world at large, it’s why she’s negotiating with him instead of killing him where he stands. But he’s also right. Skitter is just a teenager with tunnel vision. Her entire morality is not based on some grander thing, but her father. Her morality is her father’s approval. “What would my father think if I killed Tagg right here?” That’s her driving morality, besides the fear of becoming a backstabbing bully, which she has already become in many ways. Is Skitter aware that her moral trappings are so flimsy? I don’t like how easily she talks about the Undersiders in this chapter in the conditional tense. Is she going to forsake her happiness and friendship for something she doesn’t even really believe in? That’s my interpretation anyway. I hope she wakes up to her real desires, or at least can use her new-found spine to grow a philosophy worth giving up all those material things for. Right now it’s just frustrating that she’s doing all these “good” things, like turning herself in, submitting to punishment, and sacrificing her life, under false pretenses that she should at least be aware of? Or is my interpretation of Skitter incomplete? I don’t think her father comes into it. Are you familiar with Jonathan Haidt’s Moral Foundation theory? He breaks down moral instincts into eight kinds (which I have copy-pasted from his Wikipedia page): * Care/harm: care for others, protecting them from harm. * Fairness/cheating or Proportionality: Justice, treating others in proportion to their actions, giving them their “just deserts”. * Liberty/oppression: characterizes judgments in terms of whether subjects are tyrannized. * Loyalty/betrayal or Ingroup: relations to your group, family, nation. * Authority/subversion or Respect: for tradition and legitimate authority. * Sanctity/degradation or Purity: avoiding disgusting things, foods, actions. I see Taylor’s morality as being based on, first, care for those around her; second, loyalty toward those who support her; and third, fairness or justice for herself and others — with liberty being seen as strictly of secondary importance, sanctity or purity as irrelevant or actively inimical to her goals, and traditional authority as a source of harm, betrayal, and injustice. She remained with the Undersiders because she felt loyal to them for the support they gave her, physical and emotional, and because they as a group (a) avoided causing harm to people during their heists and (b) during much of the early part of her tenure, were busy fighting the ABB — a task which protects people in the town from harm and brings justice to criminals. Remember how betrayed she felt when Grue didn’t want to go out and stop Purity from razing their old neighborhood? That feeling arose because she was projecting her own care/harm instincts upon him — instincts which he didn’t really share. (Look at her remarking on his care for his sister and how he saw it as loyalty to a family member.) She harasses, bullies, and injures a lot of people during the story — for reasons which are based on ideas of care/harm, loyalty/betrayal, or fairness/cheating. Lung and his gang? Murderous bastards who needed to be stopped for the safety of people throughout the town. (And look at Tangle 6.1: she hates fighting the recruited guys, hesitates to beat them up … unlike Grue, I may add.) The bank? She spidered the hostages to protect them from harm. And both at the bank and at the gallery, she participated out of a mixture of a desire to seek justice for the Undersider’s boss and out of loyalty to her teammates (initially more the former, later more the latter). After being outed? She went back to the Undersiders and went along with a limited amount of harm to people (mostly people whom she felt deserved it — for whom it was justified) to end greater harm (Dinah’s imprisonment) and bring a greater criminal to justice (Coil). And wherever she could, to the furthest extent she could, she helped people (care/harm) and tried to stop villains (fairness/cheating). Why do I say that Taylor is — despite the horrifying things she’s done — a moral person? Because there’s one thing conspicuously absent from the above list: actions taken for her own benefit. The only things she really did for her own benefit were pursuing a relationship with Grue and spending time with her father. And she gave up those things — particularly the latter — when there were more important things that urgently needed doing. Her priorities are to protect people, particularly those closest to her, and to seek justice for those who harm people. And she sacrifices to do it. That’s not a formal philosophy or an organized religion, but that’s morality. I was gonna reply, but I think you made the point I was going to, and possibly better than I would have. I don’t know — I suspect you wouldn’t have said a list of six items had eight items on it. (I really ought to start actually getting a good night’s sleep one of these days…) You make some good points, I suppose you can be “moral” without having a cognizant philosophy, but I guess I feel like Skitter’s motivation is “guilt” and one of the large factors in her guilt is her father. It doesn’t seem like there’s a reason for her to be moral in this situation though, if she’s acting intrinsically good, why is that? I guess I’m expecting a clear motivation there, or at least a lack of concern for one from Taylor herself. None of the heroes so far have yet to appreciate this either, so I’m guess I’m concerned it’s something unconscious in the story, or maybe I’m just misinterpreting things. I think that she’s not necessarily acting (at least not completely) out of guilt. Despite not having a firm religious belief or overarching (is that a word, and am I using it right?) philosophy, she generally acts in ways that she feels will minimize the damage done to others. Sure, there are times where she is aggressive or lacks compassion, but I believe she does care about people. And she feels that the changes she’s asking for would help pave the way to a better future; so much so that she is willing to sacrifice herself for them. As for the heroes not appreciating her motives, they have a greater concern for the sides that people align themselves with. They have constantly seen Skitter acting on the side of villainy (even when she wasn’t being THAT bad), and so they are reluctant, or outright opposed to cooperating with her. I was going to reply, but you made the point I was going to, and further points beside. 😀 senevri on May 10, 2013 at 04:48 said: The question really becomes what one means by ‘moral’. You seem to refer to someone with strong convictions, according to some arbitrary (well, really, what is commonly considered as moral, I guess) code of conduct. Skitter is compassionate and brave, but her convictions do not align with law. Chaotic good @eduardo: Agreed. I think D&D’s alignment system is flawed in many ways, but this is a case where there is a precise fit. Ellert on May 10, 2013 at 13:08 said: Two words and suddenly somehow i feel at home^^ Don t we all do that? Have this picture of us or the person we would like to be and try to act like it? And Skitter thinks of herself as good however she defines that. Every person has his or her own set of definitions of what good means and most people think they are good even should they be arrogant, ignorant, hateful, racist, greedy or whatever other attributes or combinations thereof you can imagine even if other people are sure they are evil. She has done criminal and bad things sure you only have to read the list her lawyer brought and its not nearly complete to see that. But most of those she did in an attempt to either as you said yourself save her friends or achieve a goal that she thought of as desirable (freeing Dinah, saving the city from Endbringer or S9). Most people are selfish or at least selfcenterd and give their own circle of aquintances a higher priority in such considerations she is not different and that doesn t make her evil only human. I m pretty sure we could debate the definition of moral and most of her acts for a good long while since they are mostly subjective to one s own view. A ‘moral’ being founded in religion can go evil just as well as anyone else just look to the crusades for that. And i disagree with you about her moral being founded on her fathers approval for that she doesn t nearly seek enough contact with him or has her thoughts revolving around him. Her power having disconected her from humanity i could take as a reason for becomming more ruthless and less moral but i still believe she has a moral code. To have such a code you don t need to be philosopher or think about it constantly your actions need to show consistant intent which with the insight we as the readers have i d say is there. I don t say it wouldn t help her cement it if she found the time to sit down and reflect but i thought her at the cemetary did just that too and well. Well damn this was meant as a reply to Chime should check next time before clicking post. I guess what I’m trying to say is that Skitter has been through a lot of shit. And a lot of that has been “automatic”. At no point was she ever really in a position to “do right” in the sense the heroes want her to. The moment she joined the Undersiders, her fate was sealed. Skitter wouldn’t betray friends like her old friends had betrayed her. And from there, it was basically a roller coaster – one ridiculous conflict after another. So little time has passed since this story started and finally, Skitter has some time to think. She’s railroaded by Dinah to turn herself in, or at least, “break from her friends” for some greater good – but this is the same conflict that we had earlier in the story. Taylor would not betray the Undersiders to give the PRT information on them and Coil. At the time, that was the greater good, however. Dinah asks her to abandon her friends and she does, with seemingly little hesitation or thought. Does she consider this not a betrayal of sorts? What makes this different from the earlier conflict? I guess I’m expecting her to have a reason for why she’s doing this that is more specific. If Taylor really cared about the greater good from the very beginning, she would have betrayed the Undersiders, no? To say that Taylor is submitting herself to life in prison because she’s a moral person is confusing to me, because although she has morals, they’re not anything close to the morals the PRT wished she had from the start. They want to imprison her; in effect, they are saying that her choices were unjustified and warrant justice. If Taylor isn’t cognizant of this, okay, but it’s where I’m coming from on this? Maybe I’m making a big deal out of this, but there’s something about this recent development that scratches me somewhere, like something’s off and I can’t place it. She didn’t betray the Undersiders because she realized that even though they weren’t all that good, the PRT was full of assholes and manipulative and corrupt people as well. And she’s been able to steer the Undersiders in a more positive direction than they might have gone otherwise, and done a lot of good in the process. I think it was even stated in cannon that she’s sort of the morality chain of the group. And with cutting ties when Dinah told her to, she believes that Dinah is also working for the greater good, and that despite not wanting to, it will ultimately lead to them stopping Jack Slash. > Dinah asks her to abandon her friends and she does, with seemingly little hesitation or thought. I think she was convinced for a while that she should leave — and not just because of DInah’s notes, but because the Undersiders are criminals, what she is doing with them isn’t what needs to be done to prevent or mitigate the upcoming apocalypse, and she was never happy with them. Loyalty is the only reason she didn’t leave earlier. I thought she did actually care about her teammates. I mean, Tattletale was her best friend, and with her bringing up her and Grue’s relationship, I didn’t feel like that was just something she was saying as a game with Tagg. On a semi-unrelated note, have there been jokes about a game of Tagg yet? Psycho Gecko on May 9, 2013 at 1:24 AM said: You’re right — she did care about them as friends. I still think she was feeling guilty about staying, though. PG: Oh, good. PB: I can see that. Miloptheny on May 10, 2013 at 01:14 said: Tactically, it makes sense for Skitter to turn herself in. When dealing with someone like Tagg, any other kind of action on her part would only lead to an escalation in violence. By making the first move in passive resistance, she maintains the upper hand. Plus, I think the keyword here is not betrayal, guilt, or morality. It’s trust. Skitter trusts Dinah. Those notes were written for her own benefit and she gets that. Skitter likely considered surrender as one of her options; “cut ties” just made her decision a bit easier. “automatic” is an interesting choice of words. In split-second decisions there is no time for a conscious reasoning or to think through all implications you simply do as you instictivly feel like doing. That becomes influenced by your upbringing and training as i said i believe she still has a moral code and i think Packbat summed it up pretty neatly. And i think that is was is underlying this “automatic” response. The circumstances of the Undersiders then and now are different. Then she truly believed it was for the greater good to find the mastermind behind the Undersiders but by the time she found him the people she would have needed to act didn t trust her any longer and she had built friendships that for her outweighed the concept of the greater good. At the same time she still was working against Coil so in her own frame of mind still for good. Now she knows that the world will end and the majority of the human race will die. That is completly different from the shadowy greater good from earlier. Who would benefit from the Undersiders being put in jail? Possible future victims or capes that would have fought them? Thats hard to imagine but the majority of the human race diing now thats pretty firmly in the avoid at all costs column right there. And her believing in Dinah working for that is a great motivator to follow her lead. I believe you fell into that mindset of if you are at the side of the law you are right and good and if you are not on the side of the law you are evil and wrong. This story for me at least shows clearly that that kind thinking is flawed for Skitter is at heart a good person and just tries to do the best she can. She did not want to become a supervillain but that is where it lead her. At the same time just because someone is called a hero that doesn t mean he or she is or is right and just. Look at Alexandria helping abduct people from neardeath situations so they can be experimented on and you know what i mean. It feels weird arguing in favor of a supervillain in such stories i m normally on the hero side pretty firmly but thats just the thing those heroes aspire to be good just like i think Skitter does the heroes here often aspire a career which is more realistic but can lead them to follow people like Tagg for whom i have developed a deep hatred. Worm’s 20,000th comment. How appropriate. (: Thats a lot of comments. Well i personally hope the next 20k bring us as much enjoyment and banter as the last. Don’t you think Tattletale has enough clout to nip any legislation in the bud? Hell I see her giving politicians some of her own ideas. And can someone pls labotomize Tagg! If she gave Tagg crabs & lice could she still hear him? 😋It would be great if some capes & persons in charge would be on Skitters side. explorerbean on May 10, 2013 at 15:46 said: Oh, man. I don’t know if I have enough spoons to deal with this. Why? Is Skitter going to summon The Tick? http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/the%20spoon%20theory That’s a really good article. Typo check: She arrived, minutes late. A woman, tall, in a suit, carrying nothing with her. I sensed her at the periphery of my range, walking with a steady, strong stride. So you’re saying Alexandria arrived late? Or should that be “She arrived, minutes later.” So. They’ve decided not to use Taylor’s dad. Good choice. Typed too soon. Silly me. And: Holy carp, each side is pulling out its big guns. Wow, got here again with My wordage project and it has taken some time and effort. To think that the next eight arcs contain two and a half as many comments as all the preceding arcs collectively reals hits home. The other thing is I still Pick on things as I got through even though I have been through before. Each (cursory) pass through allows me to put extra snippets together and think of new questions. That can wait though, I have eight arcs and forty thousand comments to get through. …And yet, that task is dwarfed by Wildbow’s past and present ones. Hmm. Did anyone else notice that Tagg handled the Flechette situation much less ham-handedly than the Skitter one? If he genuinely had a “Villains are the enemy, give no quarter!” mentality, I doubt he would’ve been so sympathetic towards Flechette. He appeared to be showing genuine understanding and empathy there. Maybe he’s not completely hopeless after all… BTW, possible dialogue that went through my head reading this: Tagg (to Danny) : I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised at that opinion from someone who raised a supervillain. Danny: Yes, I raised a supervillain. A really good one. He would act a hero being “corrupt”exactly like that with a fanatic mentality,only way to reconcile his black and white insanity is thinking like in a child’s cartoon:the hero who left was corrupt but he is intristically a hero,so he will eventually realize his mistake. pfffffhahahahaha you don’t know SHIT So this is how Tagg has gotten to a position of leadership over sane people with that us-vs-them mentality of his: he’s good at faking it. anka213 on March 12, 2016 at 17:15 said: Ok, so apparently Vista and Miss Militia are going to join the Undersiders (sooner or later, one way or another). I mean, we all know what happens if you openly say that you hate Skitter. It happened to Parian, it happened to Flechette. The pattern is undeniable. 😉 matrience e on November 28, 2017 at 14:50 said: you wrote Mr. Hebert when it’s ms Chris on January 3, 2018 at 01:26 said: That should be Ms. Hebert, Calle is talking to Taylor there. Al on May 23, 2018 at 04:56 said: I though the one arriving was Contessa so even if I know Alexandria is really bad news, I don’t feel her as threatening now. Expectatives. IKR! I was no excited then I got kind of mad. Like get out of here Alexandria no one likes you! How exactly is having only one in charge of all the land better than having many? After all it should be harder for the gov to talk with multiple people than just one. Oh thank god… fuck I thought that it was contessa! Just her… Leave a Reply to Psycho Gecko Cancel reply	cc/2019-30/en_middle_0059.json.gz/line1799
__label__cc	0.527903	0.472097	Drone 23.2 Every part of the Las Vegas team’s reaction to our arrival screamed dissatisfaction. Folded arms, the way none of them would meet our eyes, the very way they were positioned, so they were just enough in our way to make it clear they didn’t agree with what was going on, but not so close as to be with us. Except it wasn’t me that was the problem, this time. Satyrical, Satyr for short, wore a helmet sculpted to look like a goat’s head, the mouth in a perpetual smile. On a good day, I imagined his eyes were bright with mischief, his shaped eyebrows quirked behind the large eye-holes of the helmet. This wasn’t a good day. There were circles under his eyes, and he glowered. With the smile on his helmet, it made him look… I didn’t want to say deranged, but it was the word that sprung to mind. His bare chest was muscular, waxed hairless, the belt and leggings of his costume slung low enough that I could see the lines of his lower stomach that pointed to his… yeah. It was admittedly distracting. It was meant to be distracting. Nix, Blowout, Leonid and Floret joined Satyrical in their anger. Heroes in more flamboyant and colorful costumes than normal, their moods a contrast in how dark they were. Spur and Ravine seemed more lost than angry, but the way they retreated into their group as we passed told me that they would side with their team over us. If there was something to be said, words of encouragement or apology, nobody I was with seemed ready or able to come up with them. We approached the elevator and made our way down, and none of the local heroes joined us. “Thoughts?” Vantage asked me. “For a city like Las Vegas, I’m surprised the building is so…” I trailed off. “Dull? Like a giant tombstone?” “No windows,” I said. “Just the front door, walls all around it, no decoration except for the PRT logo on the face of the building, no lights except for spotlights.” “Stands out,” Vantage said. “There’s contrast.” “And it’s required. Vegas is one of the worst cities for sheer number of villains,” Rime said. Her entire demeanor was rigid, which maybe fit in a way with her ice powers. “Vegas employs a group of unsponsored thinkers and tinkers to monitor the venues, much like the PRT does with the economy, ensuring that everything is above-board, that everything is being conducted fairly and that the numbers add up. Vegas changed as a result, developed a different cape dynamic. In Los Angeles or New York, it’s the people who can blow down buildings that are seen as true ‘heavy hitters’. Here, they’re trying to game the system, and the heroes are trying to game them. In Vegas, it’s thinkers, tinkers and strangers who rule the underworld.” “A different sort of cops and robbers,” I said. “Cops and robbers?” Vantage asked. “A way my teammate once explained it to me. The, for lack of a better word, healthy way for heroes and villains to be, is for all of this to be a game of sorts. Trading blows, counting coup, but ultimately leaving the other side without any permanent damage.” “Counting coup?” Leister asked. He was the sole subordinate that Vantage had brought along. Rime, by contrast, had brought Usher and Arbiter from her team. Prefab from San Diego had shown up as well. I explained, “The term came from the Native Americans’ style of warfare. In a fight, one person makes a risky, successful play against the other side showing their prowess. They gain reputation, the other side loses some. All it is, though, is a game. A way to train and make sure you’re up to snuff against the real threats without losing anything.” “Except,” Rime said, “Things escalate. One side loses too many times in a row, they push things too far. And there’s always collateral damage. I notice civilians don’t factor into that explanation.” “I’m not saying I agree with it a hundred percent,” I said. “I didn’t, even from the beginning. But it sounds like what you’re describing.” Rime shook her head. “No. The strip is dying. Every successful job the villains pull causes catastrophic damage, sees venues shutting down. More villains arrive, hearing of the last group’s success, or because there’s room for them, and they settle in the more desolate areas. The problem feeds itself, gets worse. This building is a fortress and a prison because that’s what the city needs, that’s how bad things have gotten.” “And the heroes?” “Flamboyant, as brilliant and attention-grabbing in the open as the villains are discreet and hidden in plain sight. The Vegas team is largely made up of strategists, charlatans and borderline scoundrels. Individuals who can foil cheats and frauds, or throw a wrench in the works of the local masterminds, who think like they do. Which is why this is such a problem.” The last sentence had a note of finality to it. I decided not to push my luck with further questions. We made our way out into the corridor with the cells. It was deeper, more developed than Brockton Bay’s. There were two tiers, with one set of cells above the other. Rime moved her phone next to a television screen, then tapped it. There was a pause as a row of black squares with white outlines gradually lit up. She leaned forward a little, her hand resting against the wall beside the television. The screen came alive. I saw a man in a cape uniform within, without a mask. He had albinism, to the point that the velvet purple of his costume overwhelmed the little of his skin that was showing. The irises of his eyes were a dark pink. “Pretender,” Rime said. Her voice had a harder note than before. “What have you done?” “Don’t place all of the blame on me. You forced my hand.” “No,” she said, “There had to be another way. You could have admitted-” “A death sentence,” he said. “You’re an upper-echelon cape now, and you have the clearance. You know about her. The bogeyman that comes after anyone who tries to release information they want to keep secret.” I glanced at Vantage, who only shrugged. “We could have protected you,” Rime said. Pretender only chuckled. “No. No you couldn’t. I’m dead anyways, one way or another. I surrender, it’s the end of my career, and that’s all I have. I talk, I die. This was the best option.” The hand that Rime was using to lean against the wall clenched into a fist. Her voice was tight as she asked, “Killing a government thinker was the best option?” Rime straightened, but it was more of a defeated gesture than anything, her hand dropping from the wall. “You were one of the good ones, Pretender.” “Still am,” he said. He crossed the length of his cell, sitting on the corner of the bed. “I’d explain, but it would only get us all killed.” “We’re going to have to take you to a more secure facility,” Rime said. “Well, I didn’t expect you’d let me go. Do what you have to. I made a deal with the devil, you caught me, for better or worse,” Pretender said. In a quieter voice, he said, “About time I pay the price.” Rime turned off the television. She looked at Arbiter. “My riot sense was going off like crazy as he talked,” Arbiter said. “There’s something at work here.” “Describe it.” Arbiter touched her middle fingers and thumbs together, forming a circle, “Orange.” She moved her hands further apart, “Red.” Then further apart again, until the implied ‘circle’ was as big as a large pizza. “Yellow.” “That bad?” Rime asked. “Bad.” “Then we move now,” Rime said. She raised her hand to her ear. “Dragon? Cancel your errands. We’re in for some trouble, almost guaranteed, and I’m thinking we want to clear out before it descends.” There was a short pause. The digital voice of Dragon’s A.I., the same one I’d heard through her drones and the armbands, informed us, “Kulshedra model en route to Las Vegas Protectorate Headquarters. ETA two minutes. Tiamat to join in t-minus eight minutes.” “Okay,” Rime said. “It’ll be here before we’re on the roof. Let’s get Pretender packed up. Standard stranger protocols in effect. Usher and Arbiter, you handle it. Everyone else with me.” Once we were all in the elevator, I figured I was clear to ask without sounding too much like a newbie. “What was Arbiter talking about? Riot sense?” Rime explained. “She’s a social thinker, in addition to her minor blaster and shaker powers. Her danger sense is mild at best, not something she can react to immediately, but it makes her aware of associated individuals and the threat they pose. She wouldn’t be able to see much from Pretender alone, but she knows that there’s a moderate to high danger posed by those closest to him-” “His team, probably,” Prefab said. “She’s predicting a massive risk from people who have an intimate but less immediate association or those who have a recent but less familiar association with him…” “Old teammates or family that he doesn’t see regularly,” Prefab said, “Or people he’s hired for help that he isn’t as familiar with.” Rime finished, “…And a moderate risk from people or things on the periphery of his real-life social network.” “The bogeyman?” I asked. Rime didn’t answer. Instead, she looked at the digital display above the door of the elevator. “Prefab, look after our Wards. I’m going to have words with Satyr. See if we can’t work out what the angle is. Wait on the roof for our ride.” “Stranger protocols mean you don’t go anywhere alone,” Prefab said. “Of course. I’m thinking… Vantage,” she said, beckoning. Vantage nodded, stepping forward. The elevator doors opened for Rime to exit, then shut. The three of us continued up to the roof. Prefab was large, and his armor made him look larger, with shoulderpads that looked like the tower-tops of a castle, each probably weighing twice as much as my entire outfit, equipment included. He carried a heavy cannon, obviously tinker made. Leister was a teenager in lightweight silver armor with the edges molded into wave-like forms. Beneath the armor was blue cloth with a similar wave-like design embroidered on it. He held a trident, as ornate as his armor. As lightweight and sprightly as Prefab was a veritable tank. “This bogeyman-” Leister started. “Based on what we know,” Prefab said, “Arbiter giving us a yellow that possibly includes her is more worrying than a red alert involving just about anyone else.” “You don’t know anything about her?” “We mainly see her censoring information,” Prefab said. “Silencing and disappearing people who are talking about sensitive stuff, and doing the same with everyone they talked to. Only details are slipping through the net, now. About Cauldron, about Alexandria, the formulas.” “Too much for one person to handle?” I suggested. “Speculation from the top is they’ve probably stopped caring,” Prefab said. “Thinkers believe she’s letting things leak, because it doesn’t make sense that they’d keep things this tight and then slip up like they have been.” “What’s her classification?” “Thinker. Don’t worry about the number. Just run.” “Exactly how many capes are like that?” Leister asked. “A handful. Enough.” “I’m beginning to feel like I’m out of my depth,” Leister said. “You get used to that,” I said. “With the sheer luck involved in powers and the crap we wind up facing on a daily or weekly basis, it’s only a matter of time before you wind up going up against someone you don’t have a chance against.” “Yeah, but Fab’s talking-” “Prefab,” Prefab growled. “Sorry. I mean, Prefab was talking about opponents we couldn’t hope to fight, and I’ve only had two real fights so far. One of them wasn’t even a real fight.” “You’re new?” I asked, raising my eyebrows. “I’ve only been a Ward for a month.” Only two fights in a month. I felt a pang of envy. “Let’s hope there isn’t a fight today,” Prefab said. “But let’s be ready if there is one.” We ascended to the rooftop. Dragon’s suit had already landed. A bulky craft, twice the size of a helicopter, with what looked to be a cargo bay. Letters stenciled on the edge of the wing read ‘Kulshedra v0.895’. Inside, in boxes, there were butterflies. Innumerable varieties. Sadly, quite a few had died due to a lack of food or being crushed under the weight of the others. The idea was clear. The PRT wanted me to change how I operated. Dragon, at least, was willing to give me the means. It was still stupid. Ridiculous. The back of the craft opened, giving me access to the hatches. I stepped up onto the ramp and found the buttons to open the boxes. “Go, my pretties,” I said, monotone. “Go, seek out my enemies and smother them.” They took off, moving in colorful formations, organized by type, drawing fractal shapes in the air as they spread out. I stepped down off the ramp to see Leister staring at me. “I know you were joking,” Prefab said, “But no smothering.” “No smothering,” I said, sighing. I looked up. The sky was darkening. “If there’s a fight, it’s going to be at night. It’d be pretty stupid to use butterflies at night, when half of my tricks are subtle.” “You’d have to ask Rime.” Was I supposed to use non-butterflies to scout for trouble? I considered asking, but I was suspicious I already knew the answer. Best not to ask, and beg for forgiveness later. Insects and flies moved out over the surrounding cityscape. There were too many buildings here, too many that were sealed off, but I could check rooftops and balconies, and I could investigate the ground. Tens of thousands of people, all in all. “Sniper rifle,” I said, in the same instant the thought came together. “Wha?” Leister asked, incoherent and confused. Prefab’s head snapped my way. “You sure?” “I’d point,” I said, “But he’d notice. Our masks and helmets cover our faces, or I’d be worried about lip-reading.” “Don’t panic, don’t give away that you’re afraid. Into the craft. Go,” Prefab said. I nodded, wishing I had my real costume, though I knew it might not be tough enough to withstand a bullet from a sniper rifle. Prefab was the last to step inside, slowing down as he approached the ramp. I could see light glittering around the edges of the roof, growing more intense over the course of seconds. Ten, fifteen seconds passed, until there was more of the light than there were spaces in between. The light was most intense near the edges. In a clap of thunder, a rush of wind and a flare of… anti-sparks, crenellated walls appeared, extending fifteen feet up from the lip of the roof’s edge. The sparks, such as they were, were black at their core, surrounded by shadow. They spun in the air before drifting to the ground, where they flickered out of existence. “Does that block his line of sight? I can make them taller,” Prefab said. “I don’t think he has the right angle to shoot over the wall,” I said. “No weapons? Costume?” I used my subtler bugs, but he was already packing away the rifle in record time, then swiftly moving away from the roof’s edge. He brushed away my bugs as they converged, kicked a hatch open with his foot, then climbed inside with a speed that almost made me think he’d fallen. Only the fact that the hatch closed firmly after him convinced me otherwise. The only way he’d have evaded the swarm like that was if he’d known what I was doing. “No costume,” I said. “He brushed away the bugs before I could get anything substantial, but I think… glasses? And a dress shirt. I think he noticed what my bugs are doing. That’s rare.” “We’ve got trouble,” Prefab said. I realized he was using his phone. “Sniper on a rooftop nearby. Possible Thinker. Barricades should make for safe elevator exit.” “We’re on our way up,” Rime said, through the speaker. “Four capes and the containment box. Hold position, play safe. If Pretender arranged a jailbreak, he won’t have just one person working under him. Arriving in eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one…” The elevators opened. Rime, Arbiter, Vantage and Usher made their way out, wheeling a box along with them. “Password?” Prefab asked. “Twenty-three-aleph-pater-newfoundland-washington-vikare,” Rime said. “Arbiter’s group is already confirmed, they haven’t left my sight. First half of your first password?” “Eight-nine-three-scion,” he responded. “And the other two are clear.” “Good. Let’s move. A hand?” Prefab gave Rime a hand in moving the box. It couldn’t have been comfortable: four feet by six feet by four feet. Enough to stand in, but not enough to lie down. The thing had four wheels, and was dense enough that it took some muscle to get it up the ramp. I would have joined in, if I didn’t fear I would get in the way more than I’d help. I wasn’t the strongest person around. Fit, yes, but not strong. Instead, I focused on bringing my butterflies back. I couldn’t get them all back in time, but a loss of a hundred or so wasn’t a tragedy. A loss of all of the butterflies wouldn’t be a tragedy. I’d feel bad, if only because of the trouble Dragon likely went through in acquiring them, but yeah. Gosh, if they all just happened to die or get left behind, maybe I’d have to use something else. Tragic. They finally managed to settle the box at the center of the cargo bay, pulling a switch to close clasps at the base of it, lowering a solid metal pillar from the roof to the top of the box. I doubted it would budge if someone crashed a bus into it. I called back some of the butterflies closest to me, keeping others around the building with the sniper. He hadn’t set up again. “I’m worried about that sniper,” I said. “If he was coming after us, why is he giving up so easily? If he wasn’t coming after us, who was he after? A civilian?” “Identify the building as we get airborne.” “Through a window?” I asked, looking forward, to the ‘head’ of the craft, that looked out onto the city. “Bulletproof glass or no, let’s stay away from the windows for now,” Rime said. “Kulshedra, show Weaver what your cameras see.” Monitors changed from red text on a black background to high-resolution images of the surrounding walls and rooftop, a different image for each one. A second later, the ramp closed, and we took to the air, the craft vibrating softly. I studied the monitors, watching, getting a sense of the surroundings and of which buildings corresponded with what I was looking at. “Kulshedra,” I said, pretty sure I was mangling the name, “The leftmost monitor on your left side. Zoom in, a little up and left. There. Building to the left of the one in the dead center.” I tapped the screen as the ship highlighted the building in question. “Good job, Weaver,” Rime said, peering at the monitor. “Was on the roof, moved below through hatch when I used my bugs. Hasn’t left the building,” I said. Rime touched her earbud. “Vegas teams, be advised, armed individual in a building at… 125 West Sahara.” “It’s port,” Leister murmured to me. “You said ‘left side of the ship. It’s port.” “Isn’t that boats?” I asked. “Can be aircraft.” “Best leave it,” Vantage said. “Leister’s a little stubborn.” “So am I,” I said. “Maybe ‘tenacious’ is the word you want,” Vantage offered. “There aren’t a lot of people who get knocked out and still manage to win a fight.” “Are you all this pedantic?” I asked. Vantage only laughed, though I saw Rime glancing at me, and she didn’t look pleased. “Alexandria was always hard on us,” Arbiter said. Her voice had a strange tone to it, oddly melodic, “Getting us to focus on grades, extracurricular stuff, on top of what we did as a part of the team.” “We were challenged to be better than the other teams in everything, academics included,” Vantage said. “But we were the only team with a leader who cared about it.” “Except the capes in Fresno,” Arbiter said. “I was still a Ward, then.” Vantage smiled, “Oh yeah. The bastards in Fresno. They caught on, probably because we were complaining so much. Small team, but they started studying like crazy, just so we’d be in second place, academically. Didn’t matter why we were second, Alexandria was still annoyed at us.” “All those sermons on being top-notch, on acting like the people we wanted to be, and… she turned out to be a monster,” Arbiter said. “A monster slain by Weaver, here,” Usher spoke. All at once, I felt very on the spot. Each of the capes here, Rime and Prefab excluded, had worked with Alexandria in some capacity. Except Rime and Prefab were team leaders, and Defiant had commented on how every cape in a position of power had some experience working under the Triumvirate, so even they knew her to some extent. “Weaver did what had to be done,” Rime said. “Not pretty, not kind, but sometimes you have to use a knife to cut out a cancer.” All eyes were on me. Nobody was speaking. “I asked you to come along on this job for a reason, Weaver,” Rime said. “I’ve read the incident reports that involved your interactions with the PRT and the groups under the PRT’s umbrella. The bank robbery, the fundraiser, the theft of the database with the Shadow Stalker kidnapping, and your ultimate surrender, a little over a week ago.” I nodded, not sure where she was going, not wanting to interrupt. “On the latter two occasions, you and your team perverted the natural course of justice. You pretended to be defeated by Shadow Stalker in order to ambush the Wards, and you later surrendered, only to get off rather lightly for your crimes.” “I think I follow,” I said. I glanced at the others, but they were all busy trying not to look like they were listening to our conversation. Rime nodded, “It’s about-” The ship lurched, and Rime broke off mid-sentence to catch herself before she fell to the floor. Usher fell and nearly slid across the floor, but Vantage caught him. “Kulshedra!” Rime shouted, “Report!” “Incoming fire. Taking evasive maneuvers.” “The sniper,” I said. “Not likely,” the ship reported. “Unless the sniper is capable of moving great distances, he is approximately point seven three five miles away. The missile came from a perpendicular direction.” “Missile?” Leister asked, sounding very alarmed. “Projectile,” the ship corrected. “Humanoid in shape.” I saw Leister relax a fraction at that, which I found oddly charming. He was relieved it was just a person. Experience told me that small-to-medium sized explosives were less daunting than the prospect of fighting an unknown parahuman. “Let me out, Kulshedra,” Rime said, “Before they attack again. Follow my orders on comm channel two.” The back of the ship cracked open, and wind rushed into the cabin. Several of my butterflies were torn free of their roosts. “Prefab’s in charge,” Rime said. “Got it,” Prefab answered. “Usher?” Rime asked. “Hit me.” Usher didn’t respond, still struggling a bit with his precarious position, holding on to Vantage’s hand. He did close his eyes, and Rime began to glow, a sheen radiating over her hair, skin and costume. With that, she was gone, pushing her way out of her seat, leaping and taking flight, flying out of the open hatch. An instant later, the ship swayed again. Prefab used his power to create a short half-dome over Usher. The back hatch closed, and Usher was finally able to relax, with solid ground and something to hold on to. “Projectile was rotating rapidly, along both horizontal and vertical axes. Rendering composite image from video footage.” The monitors showed a gray expanse, but it began to rapidly take shape in what was first a distorted sphere, then a crude face, and finally a face complete with details. Arbiter, Vantage, Leister and Prefab all groaned in unison. I suspected Usher might have joined in if he had a better angle.. “Fuck you, Pretender,” Vantage muttered. “Fuck you. You had to hire the worst mercenaries possible, didn’t you? You asshole.” I looked at the image. Not a face I knew, but one I recognized from TV, from the internet, and one very brief encounter. “That’s B-” The ship swerved, but it didn’t manage to avoid the hit this time around. This time, the shifting center of gravity was compounded by a sudden impact, heavy enough to cave in the front of the craft. Each and every one of us were thrown out of our seats. From there, things went south quickly. No longer flightworthy, the ship struggled to maintain altitude. Bugs that had collected on the outside of the ship made me aware of how the jets that had been driving the craft forward were now angling towards the ground. They worked double time to keep the Kulshedra from spinning as it fell and to give downward thrust to counteract the pull of gravity. Rime’s power froze the Kulshedra in mid-descent, catching it between two buildings, suspended in the midst of a bridge of ice. The projectile struck us again, from directly above. The ice to our left, our port side, shattered. “Seatbelts on!” Prefab bellowed. “Hold on tight if you can’t get to one! Deep breath, don’t tense with the impact!” I climbed up to a point where there were benches, and belted myself in. One over each shoulder, one over my lap. The headrest- it wasn’t there. There was only metal. My butterflies found the real headrest above me. I reached up and found the clasps to lower the softer bundle until it sat at the right height to cushion any impacts. The ice on our starboard side cracked, an agonizing, gradual break. My heart leaped into my chest as we plunged towards the street below. The Kulshedra hit ground, and the impact was so heavy my thoughts were jarred out of my head. For long seconds, I couldn’t think, but could only experience, could only feel every part of my body hurt, aches and pains I didn’t know I had magnified by the jolt. It was a small relief that my passenger didn’t take the opportunity to act without my consent. I was bewildered enough without any added complications, stunned, sore where the straps had pulled against my shoulders and gut. “Kulshedra!” Prefab shouted. “Lights on!” “Auxilary offline. Emergency lighting failed in six attempts carried out in two seconds.” “Uhhhh,” he said, drawing out the sound, “Damage report?” “A.I. bank one offline. Aux offline. Propulsion offline. Weapons offline. Helm offline.“ “Why are you speaking strangely?” I called out. “A.I. bank one offline. Advanced linguistics, memory, geography-“ “Enough,” Prefab said, cutting it off. I almost told him to let it continue, just so we had an idea, but he was the boss. “Protectorate, Wards, sound off!” Prefab shouted. “Arbiter. Fine.” “Vantage, mildly injured,” Vantage said. “My hand.” “Usher, bleeding from a bad scrape, but otherwise okay.” “Weaver,” I said, “I’m fine.” “Leister?” Prefab asked. “Mostly okay,” Leister said, but his voice sounded strained. “Took a hit to the gut.” “Let’s get ourselves sorted out,” Prefab said. “If you can reach your phones, use them for light. There’s an exec on the second page, if you haven’t mucked with them to add ten pages of games.” “Don’t-” Leister said, still sounding odd, “Don’t diss the games, when you make us sit around waiting for stuff all the time.” I didn’t get a phone yet, I thought. But hey, I’ve got the damn butterflies. At my order, the butterflies that had been clustered on the outside of their cage took flight, spreading out over the ship’s interior. I spoke, “Kulshedra. Roof got crushed, lights with them, am I right?” “No lights in floor?” “Not at present. Standard floor fixtures in Kulshedra model precursor were removed for containment box fixtures. Lights included.” “Any power to monitors?” “Video footage of exterior, stat,” Prefab ordered, cutting in. Monitors flickered to life. One in three showed only the ground beneath us, and another third were broken. “Change the focus of any monitor displaying only asphalt,” I said. “A.I. bank one is offline. Discrimination no longer possible.“ “Monitors with video from any camera on the ship’s upper half.” “Restate, please,” the A.I. said. “Nevermind,” I said. “Um. Nine working cameras, four on port side, five on starboard, am I right?” I worked on unbelting myself, ensuring my legs were fixed in the bars beneath the bench, so I wouldn’t fall. “Label monitors with numbers from one to nine.” One by one, the monitors displayed numbers instead of the video feed. “Weaver-” Prefab said. “This isn’t helpful. We need information on our surroundings.” “No immediate threats nearby, according to my swarm,” I told him, checking with my bugs. “Ship, monitors one, three and seven weren’t displaying a usable feed. Restore a feed to each other monitor.” The videos reappeared. “Monitors two, six and eight are broken and are not displaying anything coherent. Display white instead, maximum brightness, on those screens and any ones not displaying any video.” Monitors lit up. It wasn’t much, but it was marginally better than what the Protectorate-issue phones were granting. “How the hell do you know your way around this thing?” Vantage asked. I could see him below me, one hand outstretched, the other held behind his back. “Defiant and Dragon have been ferrying me between the PRT and court, and between prison and these little field exercises, so I’ve gotten a sense of them,” I said. “And I fought a bunch of others back in Brockton Bay. You figure them out, kind of.” “I saw that bit about Dragon’s visit to Brockton Bay in the news,” Vantage said. “Here, fall.” I twisted myself around until I hung by my hands, then let myself drop from the bench. Vantage caught me with the one hand. The others were getting themselves sorted out. A few minor injuries, but it wasn’t as bad as it could be. My head snapped around as our opponent landed just outside the ship. She let go of her companions, setting them down on the ground beside her. “Hellooooo,” a girl’s voice sounded over the system. I had to turn around, checking all of the cameras, before I found the one where she was displayed, upside down. “Ship, flip monitor, um, monitor four, one-eighty-degrees vertical,” I said. It flipped the right way around. I could see a young girl on the opposite side. She was flanked by two other small children, one a male with a widow’s peak and a severe expression for his age, ten or so, the other a girl of about twelve, in overalls that ended at the knee, a star at the chest, and far too much makeup. “Fuck me,” Vantage muttered. “Bambina brought her team.” “Come out and plaaaaay,” Bambina called out. A second later, she leaped. The small detonation that followed in her wake was quenched by the appearance of Rime’s ice crystals. “Sniper’s active,” Rime’s voice came through the earbuds. She was panting. “Deliberate, accurate shooter. I’ve taken three bullets, ice armor took most of the force out of the shots. Bambina is accompanied by Starlet and August Prince, um. Shooter’s shots ricochet. Can’t dodge. There’s wounded just outside craft. Traffic caught underneath when you fell.“ “Stop talking and get inside,” Prefab said. “Can’t close the gap to the Kulshedra without getting shot again. He’s cutting me off.” “Use crystals to form a wall, get inside, damn it,” Prefab said. “Ricochets,” Rime stressed. “I- shit!” I found her with my bugs, setting them on her costume. “She’s okay, just fleeing from Bambina and Starlet. The shooter doesn’t seem to be targeting the kids.” “My power makes her immune to Bambina,” Usher said. “Maybe to the explosions,” I said, “But the impact? Or something else?” He frowned. “They’re not on the same side,” Arbiter said, “The shooter and the child villains.” “Good,” Prefab said. “Let’s-“ Bambina collided with the Kulshedra again. It rocked, nearly tipping over onto one side. “Kulshedra,” Prefab said, “Open ramp!” The ramp opened, and I sent the butterflies out. Nothing substantial, but it was something. Okay, not really. But it was an opportunity to lay out some silk. I emptied the reserves I had contained in my costume. Prefab began working on a structure, forming it out of the same flashes of light and sparks of darkness he’d used before. It took time to pull together, and the way it joined with the wall next to it, it didn’t seem like he was designing it on the fly. Similar to Labyrinth, but it was only natural that powers might run in parallel. The shooter wasn’t in my reach. Bambina was horrifically mobile, bouncing off of walls and the street, creating explosions with most of the impacts. Her teammates were along for the ride, apparently unscathed by her power. Going on the offensive would be hard, even if I was using my full complement of bugs. I was having a really hard time justifying Glenn’s rule on pretty bugs only. Prefab’s wall appeared around the craft. “Priority one is the wounded!” We made our way out of the craft. Odd as it was, I felt a mixture of relief and… an emotion I couldn’t place, at the realization that I didn’t have to fight to convince my teammates that we had to help other people. Three cars had been caught beneath the wings of Dragon’s craft, another smashed by a chunk of ice. The passengers of one car had fled, another two cars had people trapped inside, and the people in the fourth were unconscious. I helped Arbiter with the unconscious ones. “I alerted Dragon,” Prefab said. “The Vegas teams know too. This is a waiting game. We help Rime, and we keep the prisoner contained. If he gets loose, or if Bambina destroys the containment vessel, this gets a lot more complicated.” The prisoner, I noted the word choice, not Pretender. “If I can get closer to the shooter, I can disable him,” I said. “Too dangerous.” An explosion against the exterior of the wall Prefab had pulled together marked another attack from Bambina. “I can do dangerous. Let me take the kid-gloves off, and-“ “No,” Rime’s voice came through my earbud. “No. Stay.“ I grit my teeth. “You’re underestimating me.” “We’re well aware of what you’re capable of. I’m doing you a favor,” she said, and her voice was strained. “Stay, follow Prefab’s orders.“ I considered running, then stopped. “Okay. I’m giving you some backup, Rime. Best I can do.” With that, I sent butterflies her way, clustering them into human-shaped groups. When one group reached her, they surrounded her. Decoys. “Hard to see,” she said. I didn’t even need the earbud to understand, with the butterflies near her. I kept the bugs away from her face. I wasn’t sure that was ideal, but it was her call. Arbiter and Prefab had enough medical training to check the civilians over before we moved them or moved them further. With my power, I tracked Bambina as she ricocheted through the area, causing innumerable explosions across the landscape. Rime struggled to evade both Bambina and the detonation, while maintaining some degree of cover against the gunman. “Last one,” Prefab said. “Weaver, help.” I helped him get the older woman to her feet, and keep her standing as we led her into the back of Dragon’s ship. I stopped abruptly, as Bambina’s trajectory swiftly changed. “Trouble!” I called out. Bambina landed atop the wall. Her teammates landed beside her, each holding one hand. They looked a little worse for wear. Starlet was firing darts of light at Rime, the darts exploding mid-way through the air to block Rime’s path when she tried to advance. Between Starlet and the sniper, she wasn’t able to advance. “You were there for the Leviathan fight,” I spoke to Bambina. “Can’t really bounce on water, it turns out,” she said. “Wasn’t worth the trouble. Ducked out.” Prefab let go of the older woman, leaving me with the burden as he faced Bambina square-on. “Lots of attention on Pretender all of a sudden.” “Paying pretty well,” Bambina said, “And he promised a favor, too. He set some rules, but considering how we’re going above and beyond the call of duty, I’m hoping he’ll bend them. You know how fucking awesome it is to have a favor from a body snatcher? He zaps himself into some hunky celeb that’d never touch me otherwise, then…” Bambina launched into a lewd explanation of what she’d have him do to her, and vice versa. I averted my eyes and did my best to turn off my ears. I’d started out spending months suppressing my powers to varying degrees, and I’d learned to ignore some sensations from my bugs. I wasn’t so lucky when it came to my hearing. “…with my feet,” Bambina finished. Starlet, still firing on Rime, glanced over her shoulder to look at us, cackling at Bambina’s audacity, while August Prince didn’t seem to react. I’d backed away, helping the older woman hobble forward on her bad ankle, and we were close enough to the ramp for her to make her own way up. I stepped forward, my eyes still on Bambina. “Worst thing ever,” Vantage murmured from behind me. “Fighting kids? You win, you get zero credit, no matter how good their powers are. They’re children, after all. But if you lose, well, they’re kids, your reputation is fucked.” “Focus,” Prefab said. “We know who these three are. We’ve got a Mover-shaker six, a blaster-shaker four, and a master-stranger three.” “Hey, Weaver,” Bambina called out. “You’re that supervillain-turned hero, right? Offed Alexandria?” Odd, how I felt more at home in this situation than I had fifteen minutes ago. Or even helping the civilians. I’d liked helping civilians, but this was where I felt most able to reach into myself and be strangely calm. “You fucked up my rankings for a straight week, worst fucking time, too. I’d planned an escapade, was supposed to rise to number thirty, but your news took the front page instead, and I dropped to forty-five instead. I haven’t been that low in a year!” “Rankings?” I asked. “Rankings! Don’t you even pay attention? It was embarrassing. My mom’s still giving me a hard time over it, and it’s like, that’s less money from our sponsors. So I’m going to make you deepthroat my fist, okay? Break your arms and legs and make you suckle it.” She stamped, and fire rippled around her. Both August and Starlet flinched. Worse, it destroyed the silk I’d been tying around her leg. She leaped down, holding August Prince’s hand, and Arbiter took action. The heroine directed a sonic blast at Bambina with one hand, but Bambina kicked the wall, changing the direction she was moving. Arbiter blocked her with a forcefield, then raised a hand to shoot again- And stopped, standing still instead. A look of consternation appeared across her forehead, above her mask. Bambina ricocheted off of Dragon’s craft, hitting it hard enough that it shifted, then flew at Prefab. One hit, and he was out of action. The explosion hadn’t even been that large. Prefab, who had his cannon raised and hadn’t even pulled the trigger once. Bambina whipped around, rotating crazily before touching ground, her feet skidding on the ground. She set the Prince down. Starlet, up on the wall, laughed. “Can’t touch the Prince, can you?” Bambina asked. “Go, August.” The little boy advanced. He held a scepter, different from Regent’s. More of a mace. Arbiter was backing up rapidly as he advanced, and I- I thought briefly about what the heroes had said about Alexandria, about how she’d wanted them to act like the person they wanted to be. I’d done that, in a way. It reminded me of how I’d formed my identity as Skitter. I’d acted fearsome, acted as if I expected people to be afraid, expected them to listen, and they had. Even Dragon had, at one point. But maybe I didn’t need to be feared here. I could do something as Weaver. Confidence. I didn’t back down as the August Prince approached. I sent butterflies his way. No problem. Tried to move them so he would be blinded… and found they didn’t listen. Tried to bite and sting with the nastier insects I’d hidden inside the butterfly swarm, and again, no response. He closed the distance to me, swinging at my knee with the mace. I ducked back out of the way. His fighting style was graceless, without any particular fluidity. He held the mace with two hands and swung it, and then took seconds to recover. An opening to strike, and my body refused to follow up on it. That would be his power then. Something in the same department as Imp’s ability. My bugs continued past him, and I sent them straight for Bambina. She only laughed as the butterflies landed on her, stomped hard to kill most of them. “No way. You offed Alexandria. I’m not- Ow!” Bees, wasps and hornets stung simultaneously, targeting her eyes, mouth and earholes. She stomped, and soared up to the top of the wall. “My face, fuck you! This is going to swell! This fucking…” I didn’t hear the rest. I was more focused on the little kid who was striving to cave in something vital. The Prince swung at me, and I caught the mace. It was a mistake. He let go and tackled me, gripping my leg, hauling on it to put me off-balance. I couldn’t fight to pull him off, couldn’t use my bugs. This was annoying. Then I saw Bambina point, saw Starlet stop taking potshots at Rime and turn my way, reaching. If the Prince was the master-stranger hybrid, and Bambina the mover-shaker, then that left the blaster power to Starlet. “Arbiter!” Arbiter threw a forcefield between us. It didn’t matter. The dart of light she fired exploded against the forcefield, and the ensuing implosion pulled me off the ground. August Prince held on as I tumbled, then climbed up me before reaching around my throat. I tucked my chin against my collarbone, preventing him from getting a decent hold, and he started clawing at me, struggling to get fingers, a hand, between my chin and my neck. If this goes any further, Clockblocker’s never going to let me live this down. The second thought was a little more grave. If this little bastard kills me, the Undersiders will never forgive me. The others were helpless to assist me, due to the peculiarities of the Prince’s power, but they could direct their focus to Bambina and Starlet. Leister thrust out his trident, and it distorted, stretching the distance between himself and the two kid villains on the wall. He struck Starlet in the face with the shaft of the trident. Bambina kicked him, and he went flying to a point on the other side of the wall. His spear distorted and brought him to the ground, but the kick- it hit too hard. He didn’t rise. Seeing one of her Wards get taken out of action, Rime made a break for us, my decoys moving parallel to her. The sniper fired, and she went down. One guess, and it was accurate. Tumbling through the air, she used her power in one singular burst, and was encased in a two-story high tower of ice. Vantage leaped onto the top of the craft, then onto the top of the wall. Starlet’s blast nearly moved him. Bambina leapt, bouncing off a nearby building, then flying towards Vantage. He teleported out of her way, then threw a bola, catching her. She fell from the wall, landing hard. One down. Two to go. I’m better than this. The rules about interacting with the Prince were strictly defined. I could hold him, but I couldn’t hurt him. Which category did silk fall under? I had some on my person. Twenty feet in all. Twenty feet disappeared fast when it was wound around something. I chose his neck. Not hurting him, not directly. His power allowed it. One of Starlet’s implosions sent Prince and I tumbling. Too far from anything I could hold. He found the opportunity to seize me by the neck. “Someone!” I said, “Come closer!” Usher approached, and Starlet blasted the ground behind him, pulling him off his feet. He was mere handspans from where I needed him. “Rime’s out of commission!” I said, my voice strangled as Prince did his best to choke me. “Your power isn’t affecting her. Give it to me!” Usher focused his power on me. I felt it ripple through me, felt something, but it didn’t break the spell. I still couldn’t turn the slightest amount of aggression towards the kid. Usher focused his power on Vantage instead, and Vantage flared with light. Starlet’s power hit him, and it didn’t do a thing. He punched her in the gut, then caught her as she went limp. And Prince… was harder to deal with. Usher approached, and I tied thread around his leg. I tried to tell Usher to run, knowing what would happen with the thread around Prince’s neck. My voice wouldn’t come out, and it wasn’t due to the feeble but persistent attempt at strangulation. So many heroes around me, and they couldn’t touch this little bastard. Move, I thought. Move, move, move. “Your power immunity isn’t making me immune to the kid,” Vantage said, helplessly. Don’t talk, move. In the midst of the Kulshedra, I could sense moving air currents. A woman emerged from thin air, from a place cooler than the interior of the ship. The civilians we’d rescued shrieked and backed away from her. She didn’t respond, barely reacted. Someone with long, dark hair and a suit. She fixed her cuffs, then moved with purpose. But I found myself less fixated on her than on her surroundings. Oddly enough, I could feel a different structure behind the woman, a hallway. I tried to speak, but couldn’t find the air. Damn this little bastard. Damn Usher for not doing something. “What a mess,” Satyr called out. Heads turned. The Vegas Wards had arrived, perched on top of the nearest wall. They didn’t move to help, didn’t leap to intervene. Satyr glanced at Bambina, who was struggling to free herself from the bola. There was something in his eyes. Were they in on it? “Help us!” Vantage called out. “Rime’s out, and we can’t save Weaver!” Satyr didn’t speak. He glanced at the ship. He couldn’t see from the angle he’d approached, but the woman inside had pulled the lever, and the door at the back was slowly closing. I drew out words on the side. Pretender in danger The heroes turned, eyes going wide. Satyr, Blowout and Leonid rushed forward, joined by Vantage. Then Usher stepped forward to help, and the August Prince choked, giving me a little slack. I sucked in a gasp for air. Arbiter heard, whipping around, and threw a forcefield between us. I pulled away. She managed to sandwich the little bastard between her forcefield and the ground. I rolled away, sitting up. The ramp was nearly closed by the time they arrived. Vantage slammed one hand against the door, but it was too heavily armored to give. “Kul-,” I gasped out. The woman turned and walked up to the ruined nose of the craft, and began threading wires together. She didn’t even flinch as sparks flared between them. She was measured, even patient, as she worked at fixing the panel. When she was done, she tapped something out on the broken, unlit touch panel. “Kulshedra, shut down,” I managed. “Restate request.” The pillar rose from the top of the box, freeing the upper part of the box’s door. “Kulshedra, contact Dragon,” I tried. “Dragon is currently unable to reply.” “Contact Chevalier.” The woman tapped out another code, and the clamps on the bottom came open, freeing the bottom. Yet another code typed out, and the system spoke, “Type two safety override accepted.” The woman in the ship struck a single button. The A.I. spoke, “Call ended.” “Kulshedra, call Chevalier,” I repeated. The woman inside typed out a final code, and the door of the box opened, releasing Pretender. And then she spoke, and I could hear through the bugs that surrounded her. “The Doctor will see you now.” “Right-o,” Pretender said. “Gotta be better than the Birdcage.” They stepped through the gateway that led to the cool, air-conditioned hallway, and then they were gone, the butterflies in the hallway no longer in my reach. I felt my blood pumping, roaring in my ears. “They got him. They collected Pretender.” “Her. The shooter’s partner. Cauldron.” I clenched my fist. “Rime’s down. We have to help her.” “The shooter-” Vantage started. “He’s gone,” Arbiter said. “Not sensing a threat. You guys go. I’ll look after Prefab and Leister, and make sure Weaver’s okay.” Usher nodded. Satyrical gestured, and most of his team joined the L.A. team members. I was left kneeling, still catching my breath. Satyr and Nix hung back, arms folded, exchanging surreptitious glances. Arbiter didn’t look at them as she spoke, “You hired them. Bambina’s crew. You wanted to break him out.” Satyr didn’t respond. “You were going to leave the Protectorate? You had to have been.” “Yeah.” It was Nix who spoke, not Satyr. “Just like that?” Nix shook her head. “It’s gone. Doomed. We lost Alexandria, we lost Legend and Eidolon. The new team doesn’t hit half as hard. Look at Rime. Taken out of action like that. Protectorate’s a shadow of what it was.” “She was beaten by monsters the Protectorate refuses to even classify,” I said. I coughed a little. “Alexandria would have managed.” “Alexandria worked for them,” I said. Nix shrugged. Arbiter looked up at Satyr and Nix, “If you leave, the Endbringers-” Nix interrupted, “We’ll still fight Endbringers. But the Protectorate was going to take Pretender from us because of how he got his powers. It’s ridiculous.” “He was still going to be on the team,” Arbiter said. “Just… we can’t let him be leader if he’s beholden to a group like that.” “It shouldn’t matter.” “Cauldron’s evil,” Arbiter said. “They experimented on people to get the powers Pretender has.” “It doesn’t matter,” Satyr said. His voice was rough. “Pretender’s gone, and so are we. We’ll get our teammates and we’ll go.” He nudged Nix, and they turned to go. One Protectorate team gone. Arbiter dialed her phone, shifted restlessly. “Chevalier. It’s an emergency.” There was a long pause. “The Vegas team,” she said, finally. “They’ve broken ranks. There’s more, but if we’re going to arrest them, Dragon needs-” A pause. “No,” she said. “They aren’t. No. Yes. Yes, sir.” There was a defeated tone to her body language as she let her arm fall to one side, disconnecting the call. Arbiter looked from her phone to Prefab. “Dragon collapsed just before this began. She was meeting a Las Vegas Rogue.” “Yeah,” I said. I thought of the woman who’d been so handy with the computer. The censor, the bogeyman. They’d taken out Rime, no doubt because she could have sealed the box behind a wall of ice. Yet they hadn’t taken out Prefab, who could have done much the same thing. Every step of the way, every action perfect. “The Vegas heroes?” I asked. “He said to let them go,” she said, her voice small. “That we need them, even if they aren’t Protectorate. He’ll send people to talk to them and arrange something later.” I nodded, mixed emotions stewing in my midsection. It was bad, it was disappointing, to see a failure on this level, after I’d given so much up to help the Protectorate out. “We lost on every count,” I said. “Rime’s alive,” Arbiter said, looking at her phone. “Every other count, then,” I said. “There’ll be better days,” she said. Not like this, I thought, and it wasn’t a good thought. As nice as the feeling of rescuing civilians had been, this was an ugly idea, a pit in the depths of my stomach. The person I wanted to be, the person I was, reconciling them wasn’t so easy. The hero on one side, Skitter on the other. This has to change. This entry was posted in 23.02 and tagged Arbiter, August Prince, Bambina, Blowout, Contessa, Dragon, Leister, Nix, Number Man, Prefab, Rime, Satyr, Starlet, Taylor, Usher, Vantage by wildbow. Bookmark the permalink. 407 thoughts on “Drone 23.2” Lisa needs braces. Finished this chapter literally last-minute, so please forgive errors. Be sure to refresh when you see a typo to ensure it’s still there. Just finished a spell-check. MoveslikeQuagger on January 23, 2016 at 13:51 said: two real fights so far. One of them wasn’t even a real fight. Two fights? (Super necro yay) hey, this thread could be empty 🙂 heystranger111 on October 2, 2018 at 07:17 said: HAH NOPE! FIVE YEARS LATER AND THIS THREAD IS STILL KICKING!!!!!!! * on October 10, 2018 at 00:03 said: Human contact! Yes! heystranger111 on October 10, 2018 at 10:29 said: AnOtHer PeRsoN??? SirBrandalf on April 14, 2019 at 17:26 said: scherzo on April 16, 2019 at 16:55 said: Gross, where? Glassware on May 28, 2013 at 01:45 said: “Defiant and Dragon have been ferrying me between the PRT and court, and between court and these little field exercises, so I’ve gotten a sense of them,” I said. “And I fought a bunch of others back in Brockton Bay. You figure them out, kind of.” Maybe this is meant to be “prison” instead of “court?” Ristridin on May 28, 2013 at 04:47 said: “Label monitors with numbers from one to seven.” Seven should probably be nine since there are nine cameras. Also, Weaver later mentions monitor number eight, so there must be at least eight. Not necessarily. Anticipation of certain cameras not giving any useful perspective, etc. I explained, “the term came from the Native Americans’ style of warfare. the should be capitalized, I believe. Passin' Through on May 28, 2013 at 11:24 said: “Maybe ‘tenacious’ is the word you want,” Vantage offered. “Not everyone who gets knocked out and still manages to win a fight.” “and” shouldn’t be there. comickry on May 29, 2013 at 03:43 said: I thought to as well, but it works with “and”, too. Imagine an emphasis on still. In that case the “who” shouldn’t be there. Personally? I agree with the first case, removing the and, but am willing to attribute the way it is phrased to vernacular. Undead-Spaceman on May 28, 2013 at 11:33 said: -“Ship, monitors one, three and seven weren’t displaying a usable feed. Restore a feed to each other monitor.”- Wrong tense. Should be ‘aren’t’. Is fine. They aren’t as of the time she speaks (as they’re displaying numbers instead). Works for me. six attempts carried out in two seconds. “seconds” should be italics. “I-shit!” should be italics. “supervillain-turned hero” Should be two hyphens or none. “joined in if he had a better angle..” Two periods where there should be one. “Starlet was firing darts of light at Rime, the darts exploding mid-way through the air to block Rime’s path when she tried to advance. Between Starlet and the sniper, she wasn’t able to advance.” You don’t need that first “when she tried to advance”… BillC on December 28, 2014 at 23:42 said: missing closing ‘. Auxilary –> Auxiliary? Not one hundred percent sure Olivebirdy on July 2, 2015 at 06:27 said: -what my bugs were doing TOTALLY NON-FIRST POST! In a moment I’ll finish reading, but I have to say: Dying. Laughing. Okay, going back to reading. YES! Not because of shipping, but for her accurately gauging the jibe he would give her once he knew and they were talking in some capacity 😀 Especially nice to see a note of funny in there. camo005 on May 28, 2013 at 00:20 said: Haha. My friend got pissed at me for ditching him to go read this instead of playing LoL. In other news, I cant wait for Clockblocker to never let Taylor forget about getting owned by a kid. Wageslave on May 28, 2013 at 00:28 said: I don’t think Clockblocker is going to give her a lot of grief about this. It only highlights how screwed up the PRT is–and here we thought Brockton Bay was having problems… whewww. Robert on May 28, 2013 at 02:35 said: She actually reacted pretty well, she just couldn’t tell Usher to walk away due to Prince’s power treating that instruction as an aggressive action. Had she tied it to a stationary object, she might or might not have been able to roll away from it (depends on if it was treated as ‘moving herself away’ or ‘pulling Prince onto the rope’ I’d guess). Or had she known what his power was, she might have been able to stop him from closing without triggering his power by stringing up ropes of silk and having him just happen to walk into them or something. Not that this would stop Clocky from giving her hell over it. Especially as his power might well have worked: if Weaver can tie a rope around his neck, Clock should be able to freeze him or his clothing. Last Place on May 28, 2013 at 08:41 said: I sat in bed reading it while my friend threatened to queue an ARAM without me. Very worth the fuss :P. …Do all us Parahumans play League or something? If so, that would imply that I have not yet had a trigger event. I play Hello Kitty Island Adventure. Admiral Skippy on May 29, 2013 at 22:11 said: To be fair though PG, from what I’ve gathered from the comments, you’re more like our pet Endbringer than a parahuman. Apparently. Though I have finals tomorrow which means I am sitting on Tumblr instead. Well at least Bambina remembered the body shots this time in her little speech. Freak King on May 28, 2013 at 00:30 said: How old is she anyways? If she is considered to be a kid by the wards then our little pervert must be in middle school or below. Trusting on May 28, 2013 at 00:40 said: yay more Bambina ! I seem to remember it’s something where she’s older than she looks. I took that to mean she might be stuck in a kid’s body. It’s stated in the chapter, I thought (maybe lost in edits?) – she ages slower. That girl seriously needs to get laid. Which WAS what she was trying to do, so I can’t entirely blame her. Sort of like the pseudo-necromancer in the birdcage. Someguy on May 28, 2013 at 04:50 said: Mary Dahl’s systemic hypoplasia? Searching for “Bambina”, “age”, and “slow” within the chapter text didn’t turn up anything about her aging slower — I think it was, in fact, lost in edits. …And then the Undersiders all joined they’d wards. the acediamonds on May 28, 2013 at 17:23 said: I was thinking the same thing at the end. Taylor thinks about how she’s been separating her previous villainous history with her new heroic career and says things need to change? What else could it be? Though that might just be me really wanting to see the Undersiders have a major role again. Besides, we all know that if Taylor had the Undersiders to back her up she would have won. Or at least put up way better of a fight. negadarkwing on May 28, 2013 at 18:11 said: Heck the Undersiders would be an amazing black ops team. I mean look at their power sets. Regent can comprimise anyone he gets his hands on. Tattletale can make a mockery of passwords. Grue is a nightmare to fight, a force multiplier, and due to his second trigger a good counter for other capes. Imp as an assasian… Who was I talking about? And how did that guy’s throat get slashed? Skitter is good at spying, recon and sending swarms to distract or attack at a range. Only Bitch and Parian wouldn’t do so good at covert. Too bad the Undersiders aren’t cold blooded killers. Absolutely agreed, for three reasons: 1. Tattletale could produce way better tactical intelligence than “orange, red, yellow” — specifically, that it was the local team specifically that was hiring the mercenaries to break Pretender out, and said mercenaries’ ETA. She might even have deduced that it would be Bambina’s crew hired for the job. 2. Working with the Undersiders instead of the Wards, Taylor (Skitter, in this scenario) would be a lot better equipped — spidersilk and chitin armor, spiders and ready-prepared threads, good quality insects. 3. The Undersiders wouldn’t have been limited to “cart him off to jail” as the only option. Between Skitter and Tattletale, Pretender could have be set up to work under a new name as boss of a private security firm with long-term government contracts to do the kind of ops the Las Vegas Wards were known for, sharing intelligence and coordinating operations with the local Protectorate and Wards but no longer making calls within the PRT organizations. That hurt to read. I’m pretty sure this is the biggest loss Taylor’s ever suffered, unless you count being outed, and it sucks. I don’t think this will be the last time that a Cauldron hero keeps the loyalty of their teammates, either. I didn’t anticipate problems this bad from that kind of conflicting loyalty, though. mc2rpg on May 28, 2013 at 00:31 said: Well what did you expect. The Cauldron heroes didn’t do anything wrong, but they are all getting fucked over pretty hard because of the source of their powers. I wouldn’t let my friends, that I relied on to stay alive, get screwed over like that for no reason. Are the forced cauldron capes, like the 53s, who stayed also getting screwed over by this? It seems to me that most of them would just be pitied. The 53s all left to form their own team. They wouldn’t be getting screened. But it’s primarily capes in leadership positions who are getting attention, and Weld was the only one in a leadership position (up until he left). Some 53s stayed, like Hunch, but aren’t in a position to abuse their membership to the same degree a leader could. I didn’t think about it, frankly. I mean, if I were a Cauldron cape, after the reveal, I probably would quit the team and go vigilante before they could throw me out. The problem is that they’re not getting screwed over for no reason — they’re getting screwed over because Cauldron can’t be trusted, and anyone who got their powers from Cauldron might very well be working for Cauldron. (In point of fact, we know that they are required to cooperate with Cauldron about some things on pain of depowerment or death, although the heroes don’t know that.) As an organization, the PRT cannot afford to retain Cauldron capes in positions of authority, if at all. As an organization, the PRT is very likely to at some point need to go after Cauldron for its crimes. But, like you said, most Cauldron heroes didn’t personally do wrong, at least not that their teams know about. Battery didn’t do anything wrong. Triumph didn’t do anything wrong. Some of them — Battery for sure — would even be willing to cooperate against Cauldron. Which means, like in Pretender’s case, there’s going to be tension between the PRT and local heroes. If this is the only time something like this goes down, they’ll be lucky. Why would you resign when you had earned your position? Or if you were going to resign why wouldn’t you do your best to bring your entire team with you? There is no reason to just give up and go solo at this point, just because you had the money and will to go out and save people. Once you get past the top leadership it clearly won’t just be a simple case of ‘Cauldron Capes can’t be trusted, so remove them’. That leaves everyone that was close to the Cauldron capes feeling betrayed, especially when you remember that prominent villains are being recruited into the PRT. If I was a hero I would be wondering why Taylor is acceptable when my partner of two years isn’t. At least my partner hasn’t been running around trying to overthrow the government. Also, for any of the Cauldron Capes that haven’t actually done anything wrong, they are getting screwed over for no reason. There is no proof they would actually obey Cauldron, so they are being punished on pure speculation. It’s kind of a gut reaction — better to walk out than be thrown out — but rereading Battery’s interlude and thinking about Pretender’s situation leaving is actually the safe move. Getting outed as a Cauldron cape is bad for your health, still, and the PRT is making a point of outing any Cauldron heroes they identify, so quitting at the same time as all those capes who quit because of disgust at Alexandria et al. is a deniable path out of the line of fire. If any members of my team come with me, that’s their perogative. If any members of my team stay behind and we share intel under the table, that’s freaking sweet. But it’s their choice, not mine, and it’s the kind of choice that should be personal. Worth stating that the PRT is outing Cauldron capes in positions of power. Team leaders, etc. @wildbow: And what if I end up being a prospective candidate for team leader? I’m still going with the “quit before they catch me” strategy. Outting the Capes most likely to bring their teammates with them when they leave just seems like such a huge mistake to me. Although now that I think about it, the PRT does have a pretty shitty record of handling things lately, so I can’t be all that surprised that they are screwing this up. But what can you do in their shoes? What would you do differently? The info about what Alexandria is was inevitably going to leak, even before she died, and the death could readily be a catalyst for many people talking about it. Only Contessa was really holding them back (and Cauldron, behind the scenes, decided to stop protecting the Triumvirate: see number man’s interlude). So it was bound to get out somehow. Alexandria dies, and you have to tell the public -something-. Chevalier makes the call to tell the public about her shady background, with the caveat that he has to reassure the public that the Alexandria situation won’t recur. He promises to vet the leadership, makes it public so the ones in power know to step down while there’s still an excuse. But you get isolated cases like Pretender, who are too committed to their careers to leave, people who know they have immediate subordinates who are Cauldron Capes. Who find themselves between a rock and a hard place, in a situation where things were already strained at best (ie. Las Vegas). What call would you have made, Mc2rpg? Off the top of my head they could try to consolidate the capes that were made by Cauldron into their own teams. It would have some serious drawbacks, but it would at least keep the teams nominally under PRT control and prevent cluster fucks like Vegas. As it is not only can’t they trust the new team that forms in Vegas, they also can’t give it direct commands anymore. Hopefully it would also keep the Cauldron Capes from feeling like their options are murder the thinkers investigating them or be killed by the Contessa. Seeing as these are people conditioned to fight, putting them in a position where it is kill someone or die yourself the answer they are probably going to take should be rather obvious. Alathon on May 28, 2013 at 04:09 said: If the PRT told me they were redploying all Cauldron capes to homogenous teams, I’d be going to sleep every night wondering if I’ll wake up redeployed to a re-education camp. Until I quit. Wouldn’t that be better than all the Cauldron capes bailing and doing whatever the hell they wanted with no oversight? Sometimes taking trigger capes with them when they create their new teams. Now they are free to do whatever they want and nobody is even nominally looking over their shoulders and able to command them. Better to know who the Cauldron teams are and where they are hanging around. Reveen on May 28, 2013 at 08:06 said: Oh, no. The Protectorate won’t have direct control over absolutely every cape team, what a tragedy. Come on, the PRT/Protectorate has no business whatsoever telling people how to be superheroes, and we’ve established that breakaway teams will be helping with Endbringers. So what exactly is the problem? And frankly, the more Cauldron whistleblowers running around without supervision, the better. Re-read Battery’s interlude again, they did do something wrong, ALL of them except maybe guys like Triumph knew that their powers come from involuntary human experimentation and chose to take the power juice anyway. They are getting screwed exactly for that reason and they deserve every second of it. Well in this case he did apparently commit murder. Bobby Allen on May 28, 2013 at 01:08 said: They bought superpowers from a neferious organizaion knowing full well that they also sold to villans and killed whistleblowers. And Taylor overthrew the government of Brockton Bay, murdered some people, and just in general did a bunch of nasty shit. Flaunting her around the various Wards teams must be a slap in the face when Cauldron heroes are being distrusted and purged from leadership positions. I know, it’d suck if the Wards and Protectorate ever had a history of taking in villains of their own, some of whom were worse than her. Isn’t that right, Alexandria, Eidolon, and Madcap? We’re Edison and Alexandria ever actually villains* per se? Hey, do you think Madcap, aka Assault, harassing Battery and then hopping in the sack with her counts as flaunting? And if at the same time Madcap was bothering her like this she was being persecuted by the upper echelon of the PRT, and being told she won’t ever end up in charge, all the while risking the Contessa coming to kill her if she answers any questions…. Well I rather expect things might have gone rather differently there if she had the choice. Battery was a Cauldron cape, so had she survived then she would have been told she couldn’t be in charge and would have to be vetted. It was even one of her higher ups that pressured her to bring the villain on. At the time she was being harassed by Madcap she did NOT have those other stressers about her career going on. If all this was going on while she was being asked to make sacrifices with regards to Madcap she easily could have gone the other way. Until just recently being empowered by Cauldron was not considered a negative thing, so while she was putting up with Madcap she very well could have expected to eventually lead a team and end up in a position of power. The Sandman on May 28, 2013 at 00:29 said: Might be worth making a more direct play to lure out Contessa. Drop really juicy dirt on Cauldron that can’t be ignored, then just use the Xykon Method to pummel her into a fine paste. (The Xykon Method is what I like to call the application of sheer overwhelming force to blast through any tricks your opponent might have.) Guessing that Number Man was the sniper. And yeah, the rot’s pretty deep within the Protectorate. Certainly they seem to be going about the Cauldron thing the wrong way, given that it just cost them an entire team. Taylor… has nobody ever read Batman in this world? It should have existed prior to the divergence, at least. Because if anybody had read Batman, they’d know that there’s a place for a hero whose shtick is that they’re the scariest motherfucker around. Optimal strategy would be to have Taylor use the benign, friendly bugs and the more-or-less invisible bugs to serve as Mission Control for the rest of the team, constantly feeding them updates on everything of importance in her power’s radius, giving them directions, and generally taking advantage of her unparalleled capacity for overwatch. The only reason for her to come into the field directly is either if she’s personally attacked or if the opponent needs to have the stupid beaten out of them as brutally as possible. At that point, the nasty bugs come out to play, the gloves come off, and with any luck the other guy decides to surrender before he gets Skitterized. If not, the dipshit gets to be the latest entry on the “Meh, I could take her OH GOD THE BUGS ARE EVERYWHERE” list. There were comic books, but comics never really got to the bronze age, where they really had stories or where characters had more than surface depth. Ah… So no Nineties Anti-Heroes, Dark Age of Comic Books, the acompanying Dark Age of Supernames and Xtreme Kool Letterz then. The nineties anti-heroes happened IRL. Kind of (late nineties). Hey, the nineties would have still given us the Attitude Era, so there’s a chance there’d be anti-heroes. You sit there and you read your psalms and your John 3:16s. Well Austin 3:16 says I just whooped your ass! What about pro wrestling? Did the Attitude era not happen? I’d have ninja’d you if it didn’t get held up for moderation. And that’s the bottom line, ’cause Stone Cold said so. I find that Batman is similar to Shadow Skalker while Weaver is more like spider man…at least the web/silk cords part. The sadism, Social Darwinist bullshit and casual willingness to murder if she can get away with it are pretty damn big differences between Shadow Stalker and Batman. Have you read some of the more “adult” Batman comics? He doesn’t have a very big problem with killing villains. I generally don’t go for DC hentai. If you’re talking about Frank Miller… please don’t. Not “adult” in that way. More in “The Walking Dead” sense of adult, except darker. Oh, does he ever actually kill the Joker? Batman doesn’t kill (except in Tim Burton’s movies, which are very good). He may be a lot of things, but he wouldn’t let himself cross that line unless it was something huge, like Darkseid taking over everything. That’s one of those things about the Joker. There’s always that question of why he doesn’t just kill Joker. Well why doesn’t Joker just kill everyone he meets? Why is he so selective? And if Batman kills the Joker, how much more similar is he to Joker now that he’s saying “Ok, I WILL murder someone…I’ll just not murder everyone.” Despite not playing it, that’s one reason I like the look of Injustice: Gods Among Us. Joker got the last laugh over Superman there. You think someone like him regretted what he made Supes do? Not at all. In the end, he defeated the greatest hero, the blue and red boyscout himself, and created the worst villain that world had ever seen. That’s why Batman can’t kill the Joker. Batman killing the joker would not make him any more like the Joker in any way, shape, or form. Batman may believe it would, but that is basically just a rationalization to keep the villains alive to sell more comics. If this was actually true that would make any cop that killed someone in the line of duty into a monster. We wouldn’t be able to bring veterans back to America, because they would all be monsters. The soldiers don’t count. They are in an explicit wartime situation. Unless you want to put the U.S. under martial law, what they would do as police forces is irrelevant. Though you may be surprised to hear that there have been times, even in Vietnam, where they could not engage an enemy who wouldn’t engage them. That’s right, the guy could have guns, could be walking in plain sight, could be bending over backward and mooning them, but they were not allowed to fire. Probably because if the military just up and killed everyone that looked like a terrorist, we’d have a lot more problems on our hands. Or do you forget all those people who use the term “terrorist” in place of the term “middle eastern”? If you do, there’s a huge section of the news that loves to do that. And as for cops, regular men and women who don’t even always have bulletproof vests to wear, faced with someone holding a gun who refuses to put it down and surrender, they are at a pretty good risk of dying. They don’t break out the gun for every occasion too. They don’t just execute people in the streets. They have certain conduct they have to follow. Talk them down, be assertive, try nonlethal methods of handling the situation, and then, if things have escalated to deadly force, you whip out the gun and shoot the shit out of them. Even Dredd waited to use lethal force until the Slo-Mo heads had killed someone, and he was a literal walking judge, jury, and executioner. Batman, in contrast, is a highly trained martial artist with gadgets and bulletproofing and one of the best crimefighting minds ever who has Superman and The Flash on speed dial. A guy with a gun doesn’t stand a chance. Even guys with deathtraps don’t stand a chance, though wasting the time to kill the guy won’t do anything to keep the giant bowling pinball or whatever from sliding down where he is to smoosh him. So he catches Joker, who is legally insane and who doesn’t get executed because Gotham isn’t in Texas. Batman is labelled as a murderer after the joker kills himself to frame batman, as I mentioned further down. Batman’s problem is that he knows that his decision not to kill anyone is basically the only thing that keeps him from turning into the Punisher during one of the “Frank Castle is a Lawful Stupid psychotic murderer” phases of that character. Once Batman started killing, he would find it extremely difficult to not just default to that as his preferred solution to any criminals he encounters. Also, there’s the bit where he’s still technically a vigilante and as such the law would be required to come down on him like the fist of an angry god if he started killing people, a situation which can’t end well for anybody regardless of whether the lawmen choose to come after him or ignore him. This is why Batman needs to build the Birdcage. I’ve often thought that. If Wayne Industries took over the prison/asylum contract for Gotham, you can bet there’d be a lot less escapes… Personally I subscribe to the theory that the reason Batman doesn’t kill the Joker is because he’s a bit crazy himself. Oh he functions much better, and directs it in a helpful way to society. But he’s still very damaged, and as a resault he can’t bring himself to kill. Plus Joker has his immunity. Realistically someone would have hired a sniper to shoot him leaving the courthouse or something by now. @Psycho Gecko: > So he catches Joker, who is legally insane and who doesn’t get executed because Gotham isn’t in Texas. Joker isn’t the kind of “legally insane” that gets an insanity defense. The Law and the Multiverse “Supervillains and the Insanity Defense” article points us at the M’Naghten Rules: the jurors ought to be told in all cases that every man is to be presumed to be sane, and to possess a sufficient degree of reason to be responsible for his crimes, until the contrary be proved to their satisfaction; and that to establish a defence on the ground of insanity, it must be clearly proved that, at the time of the committing of the act, the party accused was labouring under such a defect of reason, from disease of the mind, as not to know the nature and quality of the act he was doing; or, if he did know it, that he did not know he was doing what was wrong. The Joker knew the nature and quality of the act that he was doing and that it was wrong. There is no insanity defense for the Joker. Kim on May 29, 2013 at 14:18 said: People like the Joker exist in real life. They die quickly. The only reason the Joker survives is plot armor. The joker kills himself after being defeated by bat man in “The Dark Knight Returns” (not the movie) Doesn’t he do that in the movie, too? Nah. According to The Joker Blogs, the Joker, aka Patient 4479, is sent to Arkham Asylum to be evaluated to see if he’s insane. He is at first under the care of Dr. Harleen Quinzel, but there are some incidents that occur, most notably a dream about bearhunting and a dead Steve in her office. Also, he won’t give back the picture of Dr. Arkham’s wife that he took. The hypnotherapy with Dr. Hugo Strange doesn’t help matters either. Things go downhill from there, but in the end, he’s only there because he wants to be. Or he could have killed him after realizing he can’t be safely locked up, can’t be rehabilitated, and just made a line in the sand. If a villain meets all these requirements, it is simply safer for him to die. Imagine how many lives would have been saved if Batman acted more like a policeman who are allowed to use lethal force to save lives if the situation warrants it. Though granted it isn’t really his fault. Realistically, the Joker would have been executed, shot “accidentally” by a policeman, or another hero who wasn’t selfish enough to let someone kill people for some moral point would have come to gotham and killed him. Except to shoot the Joker accidentally, or to execute an insane man, or any of that stuff where you just don’t look while something illegal goes on, is the point. What point do you stop at when it’s ok to give the police the power to kill any random person they come across dressed in a purple suit with a pale face and green hair? Yeah, that’s what I envision. I picture Joker finding out people want to kill him like that and kidnapping various men to make them look like him and be unable to do anything but cackle. Then release them, watch the heroes gun them down, and laugh as everyone finds out about it. That isn’t the point and he isn’t a random person. The point is a mass murder, who knows what he is doing insane or not, can not be safely locked up. He keeps escaping again and again to kill people or worse. He can’t be rehabilitated, though realistically Arkham would have the guy drugged out of his mind for others safety, and thus it is for other people’s safety that he be killed. Yes a prisoner’s rights are important, yes we shouldn’t be so quick to execute people, yes execution is a complicated issue, BUT there are no other options. There was a philosopher who made waves several months back who argued that they should let batman, or the government, kill the joker because by letting him live they are letting him kill and are somewhat responsible by not taking steps to stop him. Are you arguing that the joker, and just the joker-no other villain, is more important than the hundreds of lives he killed at this point? As a personal fan of the Joker, yes. But if you want to talk morality, what’s to stop someone from using your same legal argument today to step up and kill any U.S. presidents, serving or just recent, who have been complicit in the deaths of many people? Not a random person, can’t or won’t be locked up by the justice system, can’t be rehabilitated, and the actions they took led to far, far more deaths. The problem is that he /has/ been locked up by the justice system. They just don’t have the Birdcage, and he keeps escaping to kill more people. Just to clarify, it isn’t batman’s fault nor his self professed job and I’m saying only the joker should die. He caught the guy the police weren’t equipped to deal with and it isn’t his fault that they can’t imprison him. But honestly with all the escapes at arkham, I would argue that he make his own prison or something if you don’ t want to cross that line. Though I still argue that after the 3rd time of letting him live after he escaped yet again and killed again, he is somewhat responsible for those deaths. The president hasn’t killed hundreds of people, escaped a dozen different times from prison/psychiatric hospital to kill even more people, been unable to helped of his murderous impulses, and been caught again and again without anything changing. I’m a fan of the joker as well because he is Batman’ foil, and their conflict is very compelling. It’s just that it takes a certain willing suspension of belief that Batman considers the joker’s life more important than his mounting list of victims. And someone else would be saying “This one person only needs to die.” Like Lincoln (psychiatric problems, pursued a war that lead to a shitload of people dying, was “caught” by the media and politicians as pursuing a war that could have been ended sooner had he wanted to give in) needed to die or Kennedy needed to die by the estimation of at least one person who was equipped at the time to do so when other people couldn’t or wouldn’t. There are people who feel the President has murdered thousands of people, just like there is a whole country charging the last one for war crimes in absentia. So really, your argument boils down to “But the President isn’t the Joker in my perception.” Maybe in the perception of people flinging grenades on stage, or making posters that have presidents in Joker makeup, or the guy who took potshots at the windows of the White House with a rifle… Maybe not the president. Maybe it’s someone murdering whoever they think is the head of that infiltrating reptilian alien plot. Or a guy trying to kill whoever is hiding that the planet is hollow and filled with another world’s worth of land and creatures. There are advantages to having a system that doesn’t distinguish between the President of the United States, the Joker, and anyone else off the street. 'Lement on January 9, 2014 at 16:16 said: Frankly, I don’t see normal people having much of a reaction to US president actually being reptilian alien inflatrator either, provided he always was one(given recent events), so that shouldn’t really count from my PoV. “Change the channel please, it is that dinosaur thing for the 30th time this week.” April on December 17, 2017 at 15:19 said: 2017 here. Lizardmen from another planet would be preferable as president. sigh. It is just as a last resort though and we still use the same system for everyone. First we try to lock him up for others safety, which in the real world does keep others safe. If he keeps breaking out, than something needs to change. If the batman is going to be a vigilante that catches others the police can’t, he might as well imprison those that regular prison’s can’t imprison safely. Which would be a very interesting storyline with all the Guantanamo bay issues in the real world. Maybe batman can pull a bane and break the joker’s spine so he is physically unable to kill someone. Just being knocked out can be very dangerous and it is easily justified as an accident. Keep the joker drugged out of his mind, which does happen in psychiatric hospitals with violent patients more than people are comfortable with. If none of that works, and he keeps escaping and killing people than we have to kill him only after a jury votes yes on it. Primemountain on May 28, 2013 at 03:51 said: The problem here is best represented by Judge Dread. Batman is not a judge, or a jury. He is not the one being killed. People of Gotham are the ones being killed, and every time joker breaks out, and gets caught again, they are the ones who should ask for an execution. Not Batman. He does not have the right to write laws, or decide who lives or dies, but Gotham should have killed half of Arkam long ago, just on the basis of: We are unable to heal these people, or hold them, so with regrets, We will now eliminate them as a threat to public safety. The same way you would kill a man who was infected with a deadly infective super virus, to stop him from endangering the rest of the populace. It is sad that they are unable to help these people, but there is a limit to how far they are supposed to go in trying to save the lives of sick people who are a danger to others. At some point it is better, for society as a whole, to cut its loses. And it is sad, all loss of life is sad, but that should not stop them from making the decision, any more then the doctor who runs a hospital, and has to choose between treating one very sick patient for 500 000 $(hypothetical treatment), or buying a new cat scan, that would save a lot more lives. The joker does commit suicide after deing defeated in “The Dark Knight Returns” (not the movie) Sorry about putting it twice, slow connection had me confused. I think one thing that’s being missed is that whilst the Proctorates efforts to make their capes look presentable are /generally/ a good thing, that doesn’t mean that it’s ever intelligent to assume one rule will fit ALL cases. Most Wards are hampered relatively little by the rules the PR boys impose on them- Taylor is being crippled and having to actively try and subvert rules that don’t make sense in order to help her teammates. This is not a good situation. The Protectorate does not need /every/ one of their heroes to fit the same brief- they can go for a different set of trade-offs in a few cases that would really benefit without risking the program. Weaver ends up with an intimidating rep? Clockblocker and his 14 equivalents can be goody-two-shoes enough for the both of them! As someone said in SB, the Protectorate have been dealt a really bad hand with Weaver- why are they trying to apply their normal strategy, when they could instead go for a different tack, and embrace the advantages her past gives for a bad cop/edgy underdog persona? As another person said last update, one bad cop is a useful asset to the team, if the rest of them are good cops. Obviously there would still need to be restrictions, but they could be relatively sane ones. A happy compromise, that makes Weaver much more effective, makes her look intimidating by not like a horror movie character, and helps Taylor to rebuild her self-confidence is eminently possible. I just wonder what it will take for us to get there. Charles on May 28, 2013 at 15:52 said: We all know common sense isn’t that common, and finding someone with the right combination of authority and common sense is the only issue keeping this from being a workable solution. It’s possible that once she’s placed on a team a leader who has experience working at street-level will argue for something like this, but until then, her hands are fairly well tied. It does make you wonder how Shadow Stalker got away with so much crap though. I hope something like that happens as well, I’ve speculated on SB that if Taylor can jump through enough hoops, it might give Dragon and Defiant the leverage they need to help fix things. The key issue is trust really, Taylor just needs one person in a position to effect change to trust her. (It’s understandable that many of them don’t, most of them don’t have the full dataset to work with that we do, the only ones coming close are Miss Militia, Defiant and Dragon, and they’re in Taylor’s corner.) Be interesting to see if and how this improvement happens- Taylor is actually pretty good at getting people to trust her, and for the right reasons, if we look back in time. I suspect Shadow Stalker got away with her crap due to the full extent of it being unknown or at least sketchy in terms of exact provability, and not having challenged the very /legitimacy/ of the Protectorate and the PRT. Being messed up and doing bad things they can deal with, that’s “following the script” so to speak, but being morally driven and working outside the system, and getting it right most of the time? Saving vast numbers of lives and the future of city, in ways that highlighted that the Protectorate/PRT weren’t able to do so? That’s humiliating, and it’s a blow against their very legitimacy. (All the net good she did and her good reasons for having done that good doesn’t really seem to effect the opinions of anyone but people like Defiant, Miss Militia and Dragon.) No One in Particular on May 28, 2013 at 00:33 said: This is actually consistent with the story. Yes, Taylor rarely loses, but that’s because most of the time, her loss would mean death and the end of the story, and also because the villains almost always win in Worm. Taylor is no longer a criminal, ergo, she no longer has villain immunity and can lose, …this story is, on a fundamental level, deeply depressing… If it’s o depressing then why do I always feel so happy when I read it? Answer that, why doncha. Adam on May 28, 2013 at 01:04 said: Because it’s a damn good story with interesting and engaging characters, even the ones who only show up for a single chapter. Plus I love any chapter that expands the world, and now we have the city of sin. langer101 on May 28, 2013 at 14:26 said: Yes like poor old Atlas sob Patrick Reitz (@dreamfarer) on May 28, 2013 at 11:47 said: This story meaning Worm in general, or this chapter in particular? Either way, I don’t have the same reading of it that you do. This chapter saw Taylor survive a fight as a hero and manage “count a little coup” (Bambina’s stung face). Yes, it wasn’t a curbstomping total win for her, but just like everyone else in the world, Taylor has her off days too. She survived this one without grievous wounds, which is more than a lot of other characters can say, and that’s a win enough for me. Forty-five in the rankings … perhaps “highest-activity threads in the Parahumans Online forum”? That would explain how one person could push her down fifteen slots. Or skitter just took up the first 44. I thought it was America’s Most Wanted. More that Bambina has been in the top 40 most ‘trending’ villains, and is calculating her villainy to maximize her reputation. She let herself get low, planning a big stunt, only to be overshadowed. Fake Name on May 28, 2013 at 01:58 said: So who/what is sponsoring villains and why? I’m thinking this might be more than just a throwaway thing. Coil, for example, “sponsored” the undersiders for various reasons. Is someone doing the same with Bambina and her team? Cauldron has in the past allowed villains to rampage (Shatterbird and Siberian come to mind) in order to drum up business (or something else?) for themselves. Maybe they’re paying villains to control their movements somewhat? Keep them doing minor but visible damage (similar to Coil)? Cauldron is probably one of those sponsors. Seems like something they do after reading the Number Man interlude. Other groups like that German group, or just Vegas oddsmakers on one side of the law or another who don’t mind a little destruction on the path to greater profits. Heck, a rich casino owner from Mississippi could be paying Bambina to stay in Vegas to help his own business along. That actually makes a good deal of sense. A villain has to worry about their identity being outed, so they have to be careful about their money as the government flags suspicious banking activities. Plus the bank showed there is alot of risk involved for pulling jobs. It is much safer, and possibly more profitable, to have someone pay you to attack somewhere. Less worry about planning, they can pay you in ways that aren’t tracked, and they probably take care of all your expenses. Mercenary work is probably pretty common. Advertisers have a lot to gain from product placement agreements with villains, and not too much to lose. As long as they’re discreet and don’t get caught handing Bambina bags of cash, who’s to say she doesn’t just really like Nike sneakers? Particularly the ones with the neon bright swooshes? Anything she’s likely to wear or be carrying on camera with some degree of plausible deniability is a potential advertising space. “I’m Bambina, and I love Pepsi so much that I think twice before killing people who I see drinking it or wearing their merchandise. Mmm, Pepsi.” I’m still waiting to see any corporate heroes. You know that team pepsi and team coca cola would have a blood feud going on. You just made me think of a version of “Tiger & Bunny” set in the Wormverse. I’m not sure how to feel about this. Corporate Espionage/Sabotage could be a big source of sponsors, just as there are Corporate sponsored “Heroes” for Advertising/PR shown briefly during the Leviathan Arc, its more than likely that multinational corporations sponsor villain teams for wetwork. Shatterbird and Siberian were allowed to go free because they were Cauldron capes. Keep in mind I was not just talking about Battery’s task. In Alexandria’s interlude, Doctor Mother says they shouldn’t stop Manton, because as long as Siberian is active people will flock to join the protectorate. Alexandria then says she won’t let monsters walk free just so that they can profit from the damage they do. (Of course, we know she ends up doing exactly that). Further demonstrations that butterflies, while pretty, and better than nothing, are a very poor insect to be using in a fight involving super powers. Unfortunately, the marketing division is unlikely to recognize that winning the fights against the villains is more important for their reputation in the long run than looking pretty while doing so. With any luck they’ll be the first against the wall when the revolution comes. I was thinking that Weaver could coat the butterflies’ wings with some sort of sleeping agent in the form of a powder. Also, if she had anthrax and the determination to use it… Anthrax would probably be too slow to be viable in a fight, the sleeping powder maybe but for that bees would probably a better choice: smaller target for an opponent to see coming, could carry the powder instead of the pollen that they normally be collecting, and there is still the stinger to fall back on if more force is required. Bumble bees might be okay in the eyes of the public, actually. itching powder Ricin is more efficient and easier to make, home made Castor Oil can also be sold for profit. Veloren on May 29, 2013 at 19:38 said: Butterfly wings are extremely delicate. You could put it on their bodies/legs, but not their wings. They’re trying to change a ‘New Warrior’ into a member of ‘X-Factor’ (Government team), to use a Marvel analogy. While on paper some of these things are possible (I’m thinking back to mid-90s here) the problem is mentality. How do you take someone who literally has been winning at all costs but trying to minimize collateral and turn them loose without admitting that winning at all costs is your only goal. I feel sorry for the image consultant folks, they’ve been given an anorexic pig and told to dress it up for ‘best in show’. There’s no way that’s going to look pretty or effective. Also, they need to get some iteration of Skitter-armor back. It’s clearly impacting confidence levels. Or, hey, your warrior that used to wear Elfin Chain Mail +3 is now wearing poor-quality Padded. Yeeahhhh. Let me know how that works out. Yeah, they pretty much put Bin Laden on Seal Team Six, to make a more extreme analogy. Except Skitter never tried to win at “all” costs, she had a strict moral code, and never did more than inflict some temporary pain or fright on anyone who wasn’t a serious bad guy. She already knows how to moderate her use of force to be non-lethal, it’s the leaning on fear and intimidation thing that really causes the disconnect between her and the PRT. If Aegis was allowed to punch a villain unconscious, or Gallant or Kid Win zap them unconscious, then why can’t weaver be allowed to pepper-spray them unconscious with pepper spray-laced bluebottles or Lady bugs. Pepper spray is used by the police and members of the public, it’s hardly extreme is it? Nor is it more extreme than the degree of force that the Protectorate are already happy to employ. As things stand, Taylor is being hamstrung, and it’s annoying because she’s already more experienced than probably most of the Protectorate members about using her power to hurt and restrain but not to do permanent damage. There’s a good compromise that could be reached here, taking advantage of Taylor’s preexisting skill set whilst keeping true to the letter and spirit of the Ward’s restrictions, and it’s being missed. I hope this will change over time. Weaver probably needs to toe a much friendly line to counterbalance the negative PR factors she had working against her. Basically pretty butterflies help make up for: – A creepy, trigger-iffic power – Having been an outright, well known super villain – Having killed Alexandria* More importantly though, the other heroes aren’t necessarily aware of how much personal restraint Taylor works under, or is willing to work under now. She’s shown a lot of restraint in the past, but recently she filled a guys eyes with maggots and bug-murdered a PRT director and one of the 3 most powerful heroes on the planet. Telling Taylor she has to work with butterflies challenges her in a lot of ways, not the least of which being to prove she can live within the constraints the heroes (should) work under. Against a serious threat like the S9 or an Endbringer, it seems like everyone’s aware that the kid gloves are off and the PR guys have a different role to play (spinning the larger narrative so people see whatever good sides there are in addition to the catastrophic damage). I’ve never proposed she work without restrictions, or be freed from any of the rules the heroes normally operate under, but there’s a happy compromise between efficacy and PR, and it’s being missed. I also don’t think their PR strategy in trying to turn her into a normal hero is particularly well considered, even without the trade-offs in her effectiveness they’re making to do so. I’ve already talked about this at length, at wouldn’t want to repeat myself, so here’s a link to where I discussed it on SpaceBattles: http://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/worm-superhero-web-serial.228262/page-35#post-10888412 The point you raise about trust is a valid one, I agree with you that it’s a key factor in Taylor’s current predicament, I discussed that earlier as well: Guile on May 29, 2013 at 20:32 said: It could all be a test if Taylor is willing to abide by their frankly ludicrous rules and regs. Her first instinct is to reach for the hard and fast option against an enemy super, because that has been what’s allowed her to escape and survive. Not really what the PRT bosses are pushing – in public. Do you mean the PRT bosses are not pushing hard and fast options, or escaping and surviving? ba-dum-pssh! They ought to call this part of the story “Leave it to Weaver” Next Episode:- Weaver switches costumes, renames herself Recluse & seizes command of the Protectorate in a semi-violent takeover to clean house. I prefer the name widow, as it shows her loss of the Undersiders. Bug implications of the name should e obvious. And the public asks but one question: Where was Statesman? I may be a villain, buuuuut….”Daddy, can you fly to heaven?” Statesman’s gone, and he’s not coming back. I miss city of heroes. DC universe online is kind of boring to me. I tried to get into DC Online, but.. too much a console game for my taste. I miss CoH even if I only checked in on it every few years, unlike so many flash-in-the-pan MMOs it had some class to it.. and lots of user generated content. Still amazing that companies do that shit, just shut it down rather than sunset it in maintenance mode or license it out to a kickstart done by the studio or something. It sure taught be better than to pay for NCSoft games in the future, though.. no point when they’re going to arbitrarily go away. Had a far more extensive character creator than DC or Champions. I always come out looking kinda skinny in Champions. And I hate their Leaping powers. Just doesn’t measure up. Plus, they really don’t have but one thing like a Stalker and combat is not set up to work in that set’s favor. She needs a big metal helmet, glowy red eyes, and a couple empowerment towers. =) Now that I think about it, the closest equivalent to Dragon in CoH was Nemesis. I’m sure that’s just a coincidence and not suspicious in any way. Mmm, good coffee today. Say, did you get those TPS reports done? I love the hiring kid villains to take a dump on the Protectorate’s rep, and in general. They can put up enough of a fight to do the job, they’re naive enough to take on profoundly stupid risks, and if you build a relationship with them, the ones who manage not to get themselves killed or jailed will probably be pretty nasty customers by they time they’re adults. Looks like Cauldron has already pretty much got the Protectorate beat where it counts, in their hearts. WOOOOOOH!!! Roller coaster of emotion! Also.. here’s hoping Dragon isn’t completely fucked as a result of whatever mojo Contessa laid on her. I suppose I could hope she actually did something helpful, helped unshackle her as a peace offering. Cauldron’s been operating long enough to have infiltrated her creator’s work, could have information or even backdoors that let them do what they want with her, so I imagine that whatever Contessa did it was super effective. Night_stalker on May 28, 2013 at 07:38 said: Plus, you can’t really let loose on them without catching flak… Did anyone else think Bonesaw’s when they heard “worst” and “B-“? randomsoul2 on May 28, 2013 at 00:54 said: For one short moment my thought was Behemoth. I don’t know why. Well, it would only make sense that he’d be a mercenary in his off time. Destroying the world doesn’t really pay the bills, y’know? Nah. We know where Bonesaw is and that they don’t function as mercenaries that would be doing something as mundane as breaking Pretender out. My first thought was actually Bitch. Don’t ask me how she would jump so high or do that crazy stunt, but it would have been narratively fitting for Rachel and Taylor to be on the opposite sides of the law and battlefield. I kinda thought Bitch for a moment. Springing prisoners would be their sorta job, if they wanted to get back to their roots and away from the high intensity life-or-death fights. And maybe wanted a lot of money to pay for all the mercs they just bought for the showdown. Authy_Silverfur on May 28, 2013 at 12:26 said: I thought of Gray Boy first, because I forgot the Gray part of the name. scherzo on January 5, 2019 at 14:20 said: If we’re having a stupidity contest, my mind jumped to Bakuda. I can see how the girl with the ice powers would have been pretty useful here. Sending her out at first was their worst mistake. Freeze a big enough area around the fallen Dragon machine and have someone like prefab blast at it with a cannon and do some melting. Or hold the kid in it. Or at the very least, maneuver so that kid is between you and the person trying to blast you so their own blaster can’t hit you to due to his presence. Captain Hindsight, awaaaaaay! As for Bambina, now we get to see what is meant by all that pageant stuff. Made worse because she can’t grow up if I remember correctly, and because they overly sexualize those pageant girls anyway. It’d be a whole lot easier for her to meet a man if To Catch a Predator wasn’t around. She makes decent threats, I noticed. I just wanted to be real careful about complimenting her after that last little bit about her having Pretender bodyswap into a man and doing the most depraved thing you can think of, then adding a Hanar hanging off of something in there. And something to do with her foot too. Now, then, Dragon. Either Cauldron has backdoor access into her on their own, which would make Armsmaster jealous because you know how much he wants in Dragon’s backdoor, or they just tossed some money at Saint, or there’s even the possibility that Dragon’s coming back online on her own. However, this is Worm and good things don’t happen here, so most likely it’s one of the first two scenarios. As for August Prince himself, he could very easily be another relative from the Heartbreaker family tree. Instead of manipulating emotions or controlling bodies to keep people doing what he wants, he just has the ability to do what he wants to people without them resisting. When he hits puberty, that’s going to be a lot worse of a situation. On the plus side, SCP-668’s acquisition gives us some idea how a person like that can be stopped. He’s even weaker than that thing since he at least can be held some. Cap’n. Hindsight sounds like the biggest douchebag of a thinker so far. Though he would be very helpful right now. To know exactly what you could have done to prevent something bad from happening is incredibly useful. It would mean the PRT wouldn’t make the same mistake twice, and would know exactly what they need to change to keep similar situations from happening again. That’s assuming they actually listened to him. Well, right up there with Captain Obvious. That episode of South Park was just so ridiculous. Mint-Berry Crunch is the hero that the wormverse needs. Seriously? They need Garter Belt! Usually I don’t look at a name before reading a comment, taking the content to be more worthwhile, and the automated avatars are odd, but when I read your part about Dragon’s backdoor my mind went “Yeah, that’s Psycho. checks Yep.” The implications of Cauldron having access into Dragon are frightening, though. Oh yes, if Dragon has a backdoor that lets Cauldron in, well, that begs the question of WHEN they installed it, and why did they use it this time around? Presumably Saint is working for Cauldron to some extent, even if he isn’t actually personally aware that he is? How do we know Saint isn’t part of Cauldron, by the way? Contessa has the ability to rewire a Dragon mech, you may have noticed. We don’t. And as a general rule of thumb, the more people are in a conspiracy the less likely it being secret remains. So there ought to be a measure of who is working for Cauldron and who not. And keep in mind, Cauldron capes have the mandatory favour as an angle to force them to cooperate, but there are instances, I wager a significant amount, the Cauldron cashed these in. Probably with less prominent or powerful capes, granted, but not every Cauldron cape is in cohorts with them. Another possibility is that her precognition (if that’s her power) lets her know exactly what to program in order to create an override, much like Tattletale gets around passwords. Re: Bambina Not as much as you’d think, given, well, the violent supervillain image. Anybody who’d join one would expect authorities without saying , and conversely anyone who’d join one would have to be ….well, not very sane because of the violent part and the supervillain part. Though while she does age, she still has the showbiz mom around, so that’s probably a definite block too. As for the foot, well. Whatever she kicks explodes. Think about it. Now though, there was this Shaker like labyrinth , slowly inching towars BB, surrounded by people little older appaearance-wise than her. But I doubt she’d join him (it’d hurt her rankings). She could attack him though, by saying he made a pass at her. Actually, that last part could pretty much go towards anyone in Worm. Bambina: How dare you ask me to screw you! I’ll tear you a new asshole with my foot! Legend: …I’m gay and married. Also, come into custody, we’ll find you a nice new adoptive family. We have made a slight timeskip from the last chapter to this. Taylor has had some off-screen adventures as Weaver and gotten comfortable with the technology in Dragon’s ships. It seems she is now seeing the downsides of her heel face turn. She no longer has to convince her team-mates to do good, but there are other restrictions. And she has potentially hitched her wagon to a lost cause. Are we seeing the first signs that he weaver hero identity is just another phase she is going to have to go thought until she can finally be herself? More like a timeskip before last chapter, as well as during, maybe a little after as well. And we take another small step to the apocalypse. baochouou on May 28, 2013 at 00:52 said: After reading that chapter it almost makes me wish I had waited for the next update. Weaver gets crippled by PC crap. A team turns traitor…. All in all it makes her look weak. Looking weak and being weak are two very different things. True, but as she is looking for a team to join looking weak is not a good thing. She has to prove herself strong enough to overcome any prejudice against herself and being in the middle of a team turning traitor is not a good thing….neither is losing to a kid. This is actually a good thing on some levels. These levels are left for the student of parahumans to discern. Her biggest victories come when she looks weak. Well, if Pretender is a Cauldron cape then the real leader of Cauldron must be… (drumroll) Dave Grohl! And Buckethead is surely puking about those power potions all day long! NOPE! Chuck Testa. CEASE YOUR IMPUDENCE!!! No. Fred Durst. Now there’s someone I’d happily go to war with. Just for the pleasure of kicking his teeth in. En on May 28, 2013 at 06:33 said: Makes sense, Grohl is the devil after all, and Cauldron’s supposed to be evil. The combined efforts of Wonderboy and Young Nastyman sent him back to hell and then turned the key into a bong, though. He ain’t getting out anytime soon. I guess that he’ll have to play the best song in the world to escape Nah, haven’t you seen the Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus? Tom Waits is the devil. And the piano has been drinking, not me. Mrmdubois on May 28, 2013 at 00:55 said: Man, that sucked. At first there was funny stuff, like Taylor releasing her butterflies. Then the fight and they got crushed. I’m not sure that Taylor would have done much better with her regular arsenal, but the heroes she’s working with really fail to inspire confidence here. If she had been allowed to go after the sniper I think it’s likely she could have taken him though which would have kept Rime in the fight. Ok, so on to the threats. I like the Number Man for the sniper as well. Dragon collapsed while meeting a Vegas rogue. So either that was the lady who’s real good with wires and that happened prior to the fight, or Saint showed up. Doing his little thing for Teacher. Wow, that Prince kid is annoying. Had Weaver been given more of a heads up on his power that fight would have gone differently though. If wrapping his neck in silk is cool, then she could have kept her distance and leashed him to a lamp post. I’m beginning to think that Cauldron with the help of Alexandria really did make the PRT incompetent on purpose. The Numbers Man in his Interlude says that eventually the PRT would be disposed of and that’s just plain easier to do with an incompetent organization. Though, I’m not positive that it’s all the PRT’s fault that they bombed this fight, but it really didn’t feel like the team was shooting for any kind of synergy. This was the protectorate, not the PRT. The PRT doesn’t stand a chance without the Protectorate. Plus they’re related anyways, like how SWAT and detectives are both part of the police. They are related…for now?!? DUN-DUN-DUUUN!!! The sniper was The Number Man. She could surely have hurt him, maybe killed him, but that dude’s scary good and has the soul of a tiger.. Rime might have been right in a way. If Taylor pressed him, he could very well have put a bullet in her without ever laying eyes on her, at a similar or greater range than she operates. And Taylor wouldn’t have known, but Rime might have, that he had extraction on demand. beyondperformant on May 28, 2013 at 09:29 said: Taylor had no clue what August Prince was. The others did and that was not communicated. Also PR is fine, but Rime was drilled (maybe NM held off so she will be around for the next Endbringer). The Undersiders went at each face off at 100% to win. Sometimes they didn’t win by all that much but if you go into a fight with less than 100% you can get killed and probably will get killed eventually. The PRT didn’t fully know either – even Arbiter and Prefab were caught off guard by their inability to act. > Though, I’m not positive that it’s all the PRT’s fault that they bombed this fight, but it really didn’t feel like the team was shooting for any kind of synergy. I’m trying to think of cases where PRT teams had synergy in the past — they’re pretty thin on the ground. Come to think of it, when the Undersiders were paired with the Chicago Wards, it was the Undersiders who drove the conversation towards questions of powers and power interactions. No-one else there even considered it, and I don’t think the Wards realized what they were being asked. Actually the Chicago Wards had a pretty concrete team dynamic. Three heavy hitters to provide cover and protection for their long ranged combatant. The members of the Chicago Wards who weren’t present only build on that to a degree. But the Wards as a whole are more of a first step – it’d be more likely that a Protectorate team would move members around or exchange members with other teams as needed (such as how Vegas formed its team) to fit a certain role or dynamic, or to fill holes in the team makeup. The team members who aren’t about to move (ties to the city, for example) may have more trouble moving up the ladder, but the team works around them. Yeah, that’s true. I guess we really haven’t had a chance to see the government teams shine. So they lost, but I think it was only because they didn’t let skitter cut loose. Bambina was annoyed with the stings, but Taylor could have put her down pretty easily if she didn’t hold back. The heroes really do need a game changer, and all their big names were cauldron capes. I think they have to do what the Undersiders did when they fought the 9. Change the rules, attack unpredictably, and change the rules of engagement. Imagine if they were just a bunch of regular policemen. I imagine they would have told them to surrender, and then used lethal force. Something has to change. If it doesn’t I imagine the military will get involved if the PRT can’t do it’s job effectively, and the game of cops and robbers is over. Though I kind of doubt the military is equipped or trained to deal with this. Well, I bet heavily on the military having some sort of integrated service for capes. Division. Don’t know how they’d organize it, but it’s not like they wouldn’t be interested in super soldiers… Like the U.S. and Captain America. That’s It! Dr. Erskine reincarnated as an amoral black woman! Well it’s been stated that other countries version of the PRT is more military than police. I figure that is inevitable in the US as well as the Endbringers cause more devastation, and the current PRT can’t do it’s job. There has to be a treaty of some kind that limits parahumans in war after so long. The endbringers presence has probably turned certain parts of the war into big hellholes with new parahumans complicating things. The middle east, parts of africa, the balkans etc. There is also the whole water crisis thing and some parts of the world being unlivable due to them. I would LOVE, LOVE, LOVE a map of the world. In grrrl power their team seems to be military based but are functionally like policemen. If the military does have parahumans I imagine they are based similar to faultline’s team. Well trained strike teams, who use guns, and try not to be seen. Anyone know how the military MPs function? peter o on May 28, 2013 at 02:05 said: Actually I think the wormverse militaries don’t get involved with the capes. Likely b/c of some sort Geneva/Hague style treaty. Miss Militia seems like she would have tried to join, plus all the advantages you pointed out. But inorder to preserve cooperation for the endbringer attacks and also to keep the peace between rival nations, I can see capes being barred from the military. They might aid, in cases such as beslan-style hostage situations or if villains attack a base, but they would be treated like a police department liaison. I imagine they could do a fair bit of damage to villains, after all, nothing says they have to hit them in open combat. Simply get their civilian IDs, and break out a Barrett Longbow, .50 caliber. Most people generally don’t survive having their head turn into a cloud of red mist, and it’s got a long enough range they can still maintain surprise… I often wonder why cops bother with that Miranda rights stuff and don’t just go right to cold-blooded murder. Well, to be fair, if you’re talking about a Barrett .50 cal, list price is nearly US$5 a bullet. That’s a lot of money. You could probably get a half dozen donuts for that. This chapter is one where it really drives home how big the cast of Worm is. I felt a bit confused during this, because I don’t know who most of these people are. This chapter introduces a lot of new characters. Tried to look up some people on the cast page, but they weren’t there. Wondering who the government sponsored Thinker that Pretender killed was. Speaking of Pretender- he’s not in the comments. Overall, a lot of interesting stuff happened in this chapter, but I didn’t really enjoy reading it. Not sure if that is because it is less enjoyable than usual, or just due to the fact that I’ve had a headache since before I started reading. Err, and by comments I meant tags. I’m feeling kind of out of it tonight, sorry. I’m guessing that the thinker was a nobody. I highly doubt that it is a semi-important character like Dinah. You know, to be the advocatus diaboli, Cauldron’s influence may be accelerating the rate with which the Protectorate looses members. They could easily cash in their favours every time a high-ranking Cauldron cape is uncovered. For example, when the heroes try to bring a former team mate or boss in, let them stand by when the prisoner escapes, with their excuse being conflicting loyalties. This way lower-ranking capes could break off the Protectorate without them incriminating themselves. pidgey on May 28, 2013 at 02:14 said: They lost because Contessa was there. You can’t beat a precog. If they had unleashed Skitter, or if Prefab had thought to encase the the box Pretender was in, or if Skitter had been briefed about the mercenaries’ abilities, or any number of other errors had been corrected, they still would have lost, and probably a lot more violently, because Contessa would have laid out a different plan. Imagine you’re playing chess against a good (maybe not grandmaster, but talented) opponent, except you aren’t allowed to take back any moves, but the opponent can take back as many moves in a row as she wants, until she finds a line of play to which you won’t react correctly. There’s going to be one. Even the best players in the world can’t account for every line of play in a timely manner. Now imagine that each move is a moment in time and the game has thousands of pieces. She isn’t going to be beat like this. kylind on May 28, 2013 at 03:53 said: Do we have any confirmation whether or not Contessa being a precog is anything more than a fan theory? tieshaunn on May 28, 2013 at 04:17 said: the protectorate thinks she’s a Thinker HOWEVER, we know from Faultlines interlude that she can’t be a precog or most kinds of thinker, because Shamrock’s power would mess those up. but pidgey’s comment helped solidify an idea I’ve had about her for a while – what if she LITERALLY can take back her turns? as in, she can jump back in time, her memories intact, and retry her actions again and again (for example, Paladin’s boyfriend from The Last Skull can do that), if only for a few seconds at a time? she wouldn’t be so graceful and self-confident because her power tells her what to do – it would be because she has done this as many times as she needs, because she KNOWS what is going to happen in response to her actions! that would be a pretty major power, right there. the only way to take her down would be to figure out her backjump-limit and trap her in a situation where she wouldn’t be able to backjump far enough to save herself/ a no-win situation where no action on her part could save her she’d basically be save-scumming, for those of you who are familiar with the term That’s pretty much been my personal theory, and I could see something like that simply trumping Shamrock’s power. To my knowledge, there’s no rule that says all powers are created equal.. and even if they were equal in strength, Contessa’s presumed extensive experience with her power could have decided things in her favor. If Bonesaw’s theory about the passengers grasping a concept and building from it is correct, she actually [i]could[/i] have save-scumming as a power. so, she used to be a gamer before she got her powers? somehow, I get the mental image of her spending her free time trolling online gamers, save-scumming to always win. man, if I could buy powers from Cauldron, I’d probably buy something to stop aging (Contessa seems to have that, too), something so I didn’t need sleep anymore (no more wasting time on that!) and either power copying or save-scumming. if I could buy powers from Cauldron, I’d probably buy something to stop aging (Contessa seems to have that, too), something so I didn’t need sleep anymore Hi Weld There was a hero in The Last Skull (http://the-last-skull.blogspot.de/) that had Save-scumming as his power. his name was appropriately Mulligan. It was a very interesting take on the concept especially with the limitations given. I’m not sure that thinkers are thrown off by precogs, was it stated? Besides even if Contessa is a precog, it could be a ScryVsScry, where the stronger one wins and is able to both read clearly and jam her opponent. for example, Paladin’s boyfriend from The Last Skull can do that That’s an interesting idea, I did not like The Mulligan a lot characterwise, but his powers was well thought. We also know that Cauldron does have an handle on something similar, presumably used on Coil. Btw, Paladin gets the best line ever in that story: “…you aren’t my type…” nah, the best one would be: Sumerset: Don’t underestimate him. Everybody always— don’t underestimate the f**ing Boomerang Kid! I have been thinking that she may be some set of combination of Über and Victor. Nope. If I recall correctly, all we know about her power is from seeing the fight with Lung’s old gang and the aftermath of the fight with Faultline’s crew. And this. Everything else is pure speculation. I don’t think she’s a Precog, I believe she’s more likely to be a Thinker whose Passanger works like a subconscious Laplace’s demon in such a way that it allows her to perform perfect executions of every task. Curtis on May 28, 2013 at 20:15 said: Now there is a scary thought. What if her power is “perfection”? I bet she doesn’t have the power to be the perfect example of incompetency. Therefore, she can’t be perfect. notes on May 28, 2013 at 02:28 said: Bambina, August Prince, and Starlet all captured, for what that’s worth. Taylor always did have a pessimistic streak, but ‘defeat on every conceivable level’ is a bit harsh – no casualties, either. Taking out or stopping Contessa and the Number Man, backed by Doormaker… was unlikely to be possible anyway. They aren’t there to fight, there’s no real way to to pin them down, and even if you somehow did force an engagement, either of them is quite capable of going lethal fast enough to buy a few seconds to duck through an exit from Doormaker. And for the Number Man to not kill anyone with a sniper rifle… has to be deliberate. Vantage definitely knows about what happened with Standstill, and the conversation suggests it’s common knowledge. Briefings? Friendly chats in the timeskip? “Months” of suppressing her powers? A major timeskip? Past the next scheduled Endbringer attack, if so. The more painful defeat is that Pretender and his whole team chose Cauldron – and apparently killed a Protectorate thinker for them, perhaps as the price for his powers, perhaps as the price for his escape, perhaps just because when you use thinkers to sift for Cauldron capes, some of the interview subjects react violently – and his team bankrolled another escape attempt before walking off the job. Some of the ‘heroes’ are choosing despair. Short of outright killing an Endbringer, it’s hard to see what could bring them back. Well, Taylor’s solutions have always tended to be Gordian: if people fear the Protectorate can’t take the Contessa or the Number Man in a fight, there’s a very straightforward way to break that assumption. Not easy, but quite simple. Quite odd that Taylor didn’t engage Contessa while she was inside Kulshedra, didn’t try to chew through wiring while Contessa was fixing things – enough insects to see, not enough to attack, and no way to get more in once the door sealed? This arrangement isn’t stable. If she’s been months in medium security, it’s also not moving anywhere good. Not sure how it’ll collapse, but at some point Taylor’s going to face the choice between protocol and letting things go to hell… and while she respects law and the reasons for it, it’s hard to imagine any other result, when things fall apart, but her stepping in to the breach. Reworded the ‘months suppressing powers’ – this is only a few days after the last chapter. Taylor only had butterflies inside the Kulshedra. Thanks for the clarification on timing. And while PR is extremely important in minimizing lynchings, the PRT does need to develop a ‘wartime’ doctrine based around the truth that while posing is fine for cops and robbers, in a real fight you have to win, then spin. (See also such basic order of operations truths like ‘loot, then burn.’ Note that this is distinct from ethical issues… but Glenn doesn’t deal in ethics, just appearances.) Late thought: power vacuum in Vegas. And likely more such to come elsewhere. At some point the PRT will have to look around for who they have on staff with expertise in dealing with power vacuums. Failing that, at some point, when faced with foes willing to kill… the on-scene commander is going to let Weaver off the leash, as Rime did not. Could Weaver have taken Contessa and the Number Man? Either way, it’d be one heck of a fight. Maybe a very short one if either side has the gloves all the way off – too many ways to be lethal, too little invulnerability to go around – but one to remember. Projected result for Vegas team – something like the deal Weld got. Don’t think they’d be welcome in the Irregulars, though: Case 53s and paying Cauldron capes on one team? Awkward. Potentially interesting complications from segregating cauldron capes from trigger capes – but without knowing more about the Passengers, no way to plausibly predict what happens. Stephen R. Marsh on May 28, 2013 at 21:01 said: Thank you for the clarification. Loved the emotional change-ups with this. I was actually fine with that wording. From the beginning, she suppressed both the visual and audio aspects of her powers, and lately she’s realized she needs to suppress some of her unconscious directions as well. I think it’d work fine in a sequential format, it’s just when people are reading into everything on a day-to-day basis that it gets misconstrued as referring to just her recent stint in the “zero tolerance” zone. Did they get Bambina and co. in custody? There’s no mention of them after Contessa retrieves Pretender, but Bambina was tied up with a bola, Starlet was gutpunched (unconscious?), and Prince was under a forcefield, so we can assume it’s not actually a total loss, just Skitter being pessimistic. She’s not used to losing, but had Cauldron not intervened here, they’d have kept Pretender. Which is undoubtedly why Cauldron intervened: had Contessa seen Bambina’s group succeeding, I expect Cauldron would have stayed out of it. “I tried to tell Usher to run, knowing what would happen with the thread around Prince’s leg. ” should be “around Prince’s neck”, I think. Charlie on May 28, 2013 at 03:53 said: This chapter highlights just why I would love to be a Thinker/Stranger hybrid. All the understated power! Say, this just occured to me: does the presence of the term ‘Washington’ in the pass-phrase indicate that it to was the victim of an endbringer attack? And if yes was it Washington DC or the state? A tsunami persumably could have done quite a lot of damage to the state so it would fit for a Leviathan attack. I think we have heard mention of the Capital before when the major of BB had to talk the government out of condeming the city, so it persumably is still around unless they went with the Tokyo-3 route or Simurgh attacked Washington DC and nobody noticed any changes in the nations top politicians. Simurgh corruption in the Oval Office would only be an improvement. In fact, I don’t think that her plan is so much to get important people dancing to her tune than to use her pawns towards certain effects on everyone else. She didn’t need to directly corrupt Tagg, because the jackbooting neanderthal did that to himself during the cleanup is Lasuane. Well you see, when leviathan first arrive we found out that the Washington monument was actually…(fill in the blank yourself) The answer is his tail, you sick bastards. Matthew K on May 28, 2013 at 04:52 said: Oh boy, watch out Vegas, Taylor’s going to go Dark Age of Comics on your ass. Like “Sin City” Dark Age or more like “Rob Liefeld draws anatomically impossible unoriginal figures with huge guns and pouches but without any feet” Dark Age? “Punisher” Dark Age, with a dose of Spawn. 😀 I dunno. I’d pay good money to see her go “Marv” on someone. And then skitter became the Neuterer, ending famous families throughout the world. “Do you have the balls to face…the Neuterer?” >“Do you have the balls to face…the Neuterer?” Don’t worry guys, he’s got this one in the bag. Forum Explorer on May 28, 2013 at 06:03 said: I’m pretty sure Taylor could have taken down Numbers Man with no problems. Also we didn’t get to learn what Rine’s problem with Taylor’s attitude was. Depends. As we saw in his interlude, Numbers Man’s abilities can be beaten if there are too many possible attacks. Give Taylor enough bugs, and some range so he can’t get close to her… Then again his power might make him realize the absolute last thing he wants is for her to be knocked out. I’d love to have that happen, and then he realizes his chances of surviving have dropped down to zero. Chime on May 28, 2013 at 10:20 said: My interpretation was that Rime was having doubts about Taylor’s ‘genuineness’. In the past, she turned herself in, only for it to have been a ruse. Perhaps she thinks Skitter still intends to betray them all? It is possible – if an opportunity presents itself where Skitter must choose between the PRT and doing ‘what is right’, it seems she’ll pick the latter? Why didn’t Bambina go to Regent for that kind of fun? Easier than braking Pretender out. And kind of surprised the ship didn’t release any foam once they started falling out of the sky. Can see why it wouldn’t be feasable for pilots but why not for passengers or prisoners? At least they can put the little twirps in custody now. Small consolation. Bambina just wanted to throw them off-guard. She was paid to do the job. It wouldn’t be that hard to find someone to have sex with, if she really wanted to. Also: is she actually a kid or just looking like one? I’m not sure either where all the foam has gone. It used to be a huge concern in every engagement with Dragon or the PRT. Maybe the dispenser broke along with the ship. It was probably stored in the floor (extra cushioning in case of emergency landing), but it got removed along with the lights. This model isn’t even a version 1 yet, it was like a .8, so I don’t find it strange for it to be missing a few things that makes it a real ‘Dragon’ ship. Of course, you’d think that for such a secure sortie as this, you’d at least use a version 1. Of course, Dragon is building new ships and struggling with her own corruption(?) issues at this point. Also, they were decamping in such a hurry that they didn’t even wait for the second ship. Which makes sense, given how quickly Bambina showed up after they took off. The ship stated weapons weren’t operational. She ages more slowly than she should, so her years and mind are older than her body. Might be harder for her to find someone to drag to bed. She’s probably jealous as hell that Chris Hansen gets all the good child molesters. Man Taylor picked a bad time to be in the Protectorate, didn’t she? Too bad Taylor sucks at the superhero banter. She should have told Bambina “Young lady, I am going to wash your mouth out with a bar of soap!” I imagine that if she had a decent swarm Taylor would have been able to handle Bambina’s team pretty easily by herself. For August Prince the problem was that she was limited in how to restrain him. Better bugs and she could have tied him up with them rather than having to do it herself. Not to mention she could have spiders make more silk as needed. Numbers Man and Contessa are a different story. This chapter just shows you shouldn’t fight S rank threats with pretty butterflies and expect to win. Anyone else think it’s a bad, bad idea to try and feed the heroes that Alexandria was really corrupted? The general public has to think so, but all we need is one Tattletaleian-esque person, or a mind-reader, and Skitter’s new potential team hates her guts because she killed Alexandria for vengeance and not for self-defense, or what have you. I do think whoever that’s ‘new’ that gets close to Skitter, is going to have to learn the truth about all that. You cannot keep such dangerous secrets among close allies, we learned this during the S9 arc. Skitter is better than Cauldron, to boot. To be fair, the heroes for the most part are already aware that Alexandria was corrupt. They’ve known this since the end of the Echidna fight, where she strode naked out of the corpse of a class-S threat, her eye melted in its socket, and told thirty of forty heroes “No, you cannot try me for crimes against humanity. As for Cauldron? Try it, see how far it gets you.” sarah penguin on May 28, 2013 at 11:07 said: Another interesting update. 🙂 RazorSmile on May 28, 2013 at 11:35 said: Observationsobservationsobservations: – Vegas, baby! – Strangers and Thinkers get all the coolest powers. I love the visuals for Arbiter’s “riot sense.” – I find Leister’s name really* annoying, the nomenclatural equivalent of repeatedly biting into tinfoil – Usher makes other people immune to direct-effect superpowers – Bambina is surprisingly competent — if crazy – also she can protect others from her own power – yep, makes sense that Number Man’s the sniper – seems like the numbers told him Bambina et al were going to fail so he and Contessa stepped in pre-emptively – what kind of range does Autumn Prince’s power have, I wonder Thoughtsthoughtsthoughts: – Pretender is a Cauldron cape. Pretender is a body-hopper. Pretender killed the thinker that investigated him. Pretender insists he’s still one of the good guys despite the above. He also seems pretty sure Cauldron’s going to do horrible things to him (I concur, by the by) after rescuing him. – my guess? Cauldron’s going to use the Yangban technique to extract his power and give it to others/someone else. Why else would they need him alive? He’s a stranger, yes, but he ain’t all that. – I wonder if passengers, acting unconsciously, can attack Autumn Prince where their parahumans falter. If so, Skitter might be able to duplicate what she did against Thirteenth Hour. – don’t think Contessa has a backdoor into Dragon. She just had her power give her the moves she needed to block the AI right there and right then. note how she reacted specifically to each thing – current speculation is that her power is either (i) repeated short-jump backward time travel (ii) truly perfect precognition (prophecy, if you like) OR (iii) Intellectus, a la Dresden Files i.e. she just knows what she needs to do to win. Randomrandomrandom – hmm. “Situ-change Thinker.” Wildbow gives good terminology. I’m betting situ-change thinkers are the subset of thinkers whose powers don’t just improve the ability to acquire intel, they bend causality over a photocopier in order to do so. Coil is one for sure. If Contessa turns out to be a backstepper, she’s probably another. Someone whose power is to send their own memories backwards through time would be another. Naeddyr on May 28, 2013 at 12:23 said: I’m under the impression that killing the government thinker was one of Pretender’s Cauldron favors. He’s “safe” from Cauldron as long as he shuts up. He might become a Cauldron operative like Number Man and Contessa. I assume that Leister chose that name because trident was either already taken or to pedestrian. It would fit with someone insisting on calling the port side of a flying vehicle port side. Regarding Pretender, I assume there was more to it than meets the eye. He had a secret that he felt was worth killing for besides the obvious fact that he was a cauldron cape. He still considered himself a good guy and had exonerating evidence that he felt he could not reveal out of fear of cauldron. He also is a body-snatcher. Could he for example have done a job for Cauldron with his powers that he doesn’t think can ever be revealed? (His powers would be a good explanation of how someone like Alexandria could have gotten herself killed, but I expect she was immune to his powers.) Regarding Dragon, I think that it must not necessarily have been Contessa’s power. Cauldron could have hired or bought tech from Saint or they could have their own tinker who made a one-shot weapon against Dragon. A more sinsiter possibility is that Dragon’s collapse was unrelated to the action in Las Vegas and an after-effect of freeing her bonds or the side effect of an attack on her or the birdcage. Contessa’s power probably is not what we think. It seems that she is some sort of combat thinker like the Midnighter from the Authority, but I don’t think so. If she was merely a high-level thinker her powers would be too close to the Number Man’s and anyone who has ever read a Legion of Superheroes comic knows you can’t have two people with the same powers on one team. The save-scumming approach that others favour would be similarly out for being to close to Coil’s powers. My guess is that she actually some sort of stranger or master and that her opponents are mostly doing themselves in without realizing it. A belated thank-you to Gil for the donation. Was just looking at the account and saw a name I didn’t remember thanking; turns out it was caught by my spam filter, for some inexplicable reason (checked the spam filter for more such errors, this is an isolated incident). Sorry about that (and I’m I caught it). The total’s been updated. First name isn’t actually Gil, the paypal is an old one set up when I was still quite young, for ebay purposes, Gil is another family member who helped. I should really fix that… And you’re more than welcome, I’m annoyed that Paypal ate the spaces in the message I attached to it. Have you considered doing an interlude from Chevalier’s perspective? The stresses and choices the poor guy must be facing… Plus his power involves GIANT SWORD CANNON, what’s not to love? : D Chevalier interlude planned for the end of the arc. Interesting! He’s got a lot of issues on his plate already, and the end of an arc probably means he’ll have… more. Lots more. Say what you will about the Cauldron, the balance of power on which the Protectorate was founded was “you cannot make us obey because your PRT cannot take us in a fight” – and that was unarguably true for the Triumvirate, Eidolon especially. Chevalier, Rime, Prism, MM… these are (from what little we know) good people and good at their chosen vocation. Heroes. Capable of defying the government, the PRT, or the army in defense of the innocent or to right a wrong? Sure. Capable of making that defiance stick if it comes to the last argument of kings? At the very least, not to the same degree. And that means his funding, his support, and his nominal superiors are at once engaged in a witch-hunt for Cauldron capes (a real risk to the organization, yes, but so’s the witch-hunt), aware they were manipulated by Alexandria (and paranoid about further manipulation), and aware that, if it came to a fight… the PRT squads might well be able to take the Protectorate (without worrying about Triumvirate vengeance). The issue with the Vegas team won’t help there either – contingency planning for how to take down your local Protectorate/Wards will be dusted off in case of further betrayals. Sidenote – Cauldron can mass-produce capes. Sure, they seem highly focused on quality over quantity… but sometimes synergy is more than a buzzword. Powers can interact in surprising, and surprisingly powerful ways – the gate in Brockton Bay is proof that the whole is sometimes enormously greater than the sum of the parts. So, if the world’s at stake and you have time, you might as well mass-produce capes and toss them away if necessary (dead or amnesiac) until you get something like Labyrinth-Scrub in scale, but better suited for eradicating Endbringers. I wonder… Can Cauldron capes have a second trigger event? They didn’t actually trigger after all. So while Cauldron might be able to make more powerful capes at first, they actually have less potential than natural capes. And there are other possibilities. If Taylor is right and her passenger is taking over when she gets knocked out… Well she’s got an ally. But a Cauldron cape wouldn’t have that ally. Their passenger might want them to die, and be glad to be rid of them. I don’t think their amnesia-mojo is the right kind of effective to ‘toss away’ undesirable capes, and they seem to have some kind of strong resistance to killing them. I think something about their methods makes it very very bad when too many Cauldron capes die. Case 53 hypothesis time! 1. We already know Cauldron has no moral qualms with killing their test subjects. Case 53 are not test subjects, but legitimate “buyers” of powers who still got the short end of the stick. 2. Case 53’s are test subjects, but also stable psychologically. No reason to retain them, if introducing them into the world could add an element with a background only know to Cauldron. Let’s them gauge the reaction. 3. Physically changed subjects are statistically more powerful than unchanged ones. Gradual introduction of Case 53s allows for a growing acceptance of obviously altered humans in society, paving the way for using generally more powerful, but physiologically altering formula. 4. Babiesbabiesbabiesbabiesbabiesbabiesbabiesbabies babiesbabiesbabiesbabiesbabiesbabiesbabies babiesbabiesbabiesbabiesbabiesbabiesbabies 5. Cauldron made deals with the test subjects, having them meet some goal earns their freedom. In a sense of going above and beyond the call of their power. For instance, Weld being originally only able to absorb metal at the speed it bends under appliance of human-level force, limiting him to sodium and gold and stuff. He worked ad it till he even got as far as regeneration, earning his freedom for the cost of memory. I’d be surpriesd if he wasn’t controlled by Cauldron is some way. I think that if you look at what the Number Man and Contessa’s powers might be capable of when used together, the thought emerges that if they’re willing to invest the time, Cauldron can probably exert a degree of control over you without you even being aware of their control. You might even believe you were one of their foremost enemies, and still serve their aims. The caveat here being that Contessa and Number man have a lot of draws on their time, and are more concerned with fieldwork currently than ever. FWIW, spam filters usually give a very high spam value to messages containing both real and fictional currency names. (To block “gold seller” spam) A paypal email will include the currency’s name spelled out or in short form, and “gil” is the fictional currency for the Final Fantasy franchise. I never made a request for interlude stuff, but here’s an idea: Contessa’s PoV, when she’s fighting Weavertaylorsoldiersailor. Not now, but maybe a future fight – that is, if Weaver is an interesting opponent in this case. A bit like the burning building / grenade fight with Coil. Thank you, Charles, for the donation. That’s another update in the queue. With luck (barring issue with travel tomorrow), should be 3 updates this month, with only one chapter added to the queue, so it’s a step forward (or two steps forward, rather) to clearing the backlog. Chains Wildbow to his desk WRITE! WHIPCRACK! sundeiru on May 28, 2013 at 15:12 said: Toast on May 28, 2013 at 13:52 said: Oh. Oh dear. Something clicked while I was reading this chapter. It wasn’t any particular thing in the chapter that did it, just a hundred things from previous installments coming together at once. I think I know why Dragon’s so interested in Taylor particularly. But I dastn’t voice my suspicions, because there’s enough story left that Wildbow could change that plot point because of it and I really want it to be true. I guess the only thing to do is write it down somewhere and wait a few months. If you’re thinking what I think you’re thinking, I think you should go check Dragon’s origin story. Or maybe I have no idea what you’re thinking. I too would like to know the reasons behind Dragon’s attachments. Dragon’s origin: an AI developed by everybody’s least favorite Professor and then abandoned. It is not said how she was developed. In fiction, there are four known categories of AI creation methods. I’m thinking of the one Max Headroom belongs to. I thought something on those lines, but with him being based in newfoundland I discarded the idea. I have another theory after her motherly embrace of Weaver: Taylor was the only “stranger” with direct ties to Colin in several important/momentous issues. Thus she fixated on her. Since her empathy simulation engine is built as an expert system, Dragon built up an affinity, and she patterned it after the obvious relationship between an older woman and a child orphan of mother. (for anyone who got it: well, she IS an alchemical after all) Bah, go ahead and say it. People say so much, you could be spot on and no one would ever know. Alternatively, I think Wildbow said once he was ok with someone dropping him an email about their suspicions. I don’t know to what degree he’ll confirm or deny things though, so best to ask if that offer’s still on the table. Oh Wild Bow Peep! Avon calling! I got an awful though… anyone remembers the timeframe of both Taylor mother’s incident and Dragon’s supposed trigger event? I think you’re heading off into WMG territory there. But since you are there, maybe this little drop in Dragon is just Bonesaw connecting that thought transfer technology they stole from the Tinkers at the Toybox. “Cranial. A tinker specializing in neurology. Brain scans, draining thoughts, recording thoughts.” There’s a reason why I’m cheering for annihilation here. Annette Rose Hebert died six months before Taylor started high school — circa 2009. In Interlude 16 (Donation Bonus #2), Defiant checks notes on Dragon’s code from four years ago — 2007 — and they show symptoms of being after Dragon’s trigger event. I don’t think there’s a connection. I going to go ahead and assume that Alexandria or perhaps a contracted teacher from outside of the city was teaching the Vegas Wards. If any of them were going to a local school in the same manner as Clockblocker or Kid Win, then there is no way that they would be up to snuff by Alexandria’s standards. Truthseeker on May 28, 2013 at 15:49 said: They hurt Dragon. That is just unacceptable. …And you know you’re reading some fascinating material when you realize that Skynet has become the Woobie. … yeah. Dragon is awesome, and sweet, and shinyhappyjangly Sooooo, you know how cauldron powers are always kind of random? Does anybody ever get really crappy powers like, I don’t know, explosive diarrhea, or maybe, uncontrollable acid semen? No, but seriously, it’s kinda bugging(hehe) me. Chaos985 on May 28, 2013 at 16:04 said: what do you think is REALLY in the lower rooms that the number man didnt want to go itno? A sea of orange blood-smelling fluid, and a monstrous seven-eyed torso pinned by a great spear. Well, that would certainly fit the psyche profile of the denominated heroes. Well it has been stated that all powers have some use in combat, and explosive diarrhea/acid semen doesn’t seem like it would be good in combat. I imagine that the low numbers are simply like the merchants were. It isn’t that their powers aren’t great, it’s that they are too stupid/shortsighted/unimaginative to use their powers to their full potential so they get low numbers. Captain methhead had deflector shields but barely did anything with them. An alternative is that that low numbers either don’t get required secondary powers which limits what they can do, or they lack control like damsel of distress. You know somewhere out there there’s some hero with a power that even the PR guys couldn’t spin well. Like fecalkinesis. “Oh no, we’re facing a fecalkinetic! The shit just hit the fan!” Depends on whether they can control it within a person’s body. “I am Captain Brown Note! You may now shit yourselves in fear!” Everyone in a 5 block radius empties their bowels “AUUUUGH!” WHAM! And down goes Captain Brown Note. “Buh…Boy Scout! How! How did you escape my colon purging poopy power?” “Always Be Prepared! I went before I left!” “Oh crap! I am undone!” Were they authorized to use fecal force? Well there are a few parahumans who had really gross/body horror powers that would be weird as a heroes. The marquis as a hero would fuck up his enemies, a heroic nilbog would probably cause so many pr problems with the whole sentient mutant thing, and Echidna might have trouble finding heroes to “volunteer” to become lunch for her to copy. Ever notice how that is? With PR doing what it does, it’s easy to see how any of those would be frustrated at the restrictions placed on them. > and Echidna might have trouble finding heroes to “volunteer” to become lunch for her to copy She didn’t actually need them to become lunch — it was established in Migration 17.8 that touching was sufficient. If Noelle didn’t have her horror-hunger and if she created good clones instead of evil clones … well, the PR would still be horrifyingly bad, if only because the morality of creating the clones would be murky as all getout, but she would be essentially what Alexandria thought Cauldron was: a machine for generating heroes. One has to wonder how it would have worked out if she had gotten her powers naturally. Probably a lot less body horror. Here’s how I think the power could have worked. It’d be sorta like the capes who make copies of of themselves. Only she makes copies of others. Only temporarally. A double that lasts for a while. And that power would be invalulable. Say an Endbringer attacks. Now you can have five each of the Triumverate. You may want to take Chris (?) power into account as well, the one who took care of Noelle most of the time. Whose appearance changed slowly all the time, prettyfing him. Some combination of their powers, or a synergetic emerging effect would/should have been the originally power granted. As an example, Noelle was capable of massive physical feats, could copy all powers via clone creation and Chris was a slow shape shifter. Her power could have been impersonating people, including their memories or something. The power is a function of the situation you trigger in normally, isn’t it? And different cauldron formulas often have consistent tendencies towards a certain variety of power, right? So really, Noelle’s power was a function of the formula she took, her situation, and taking half a dose. Who knows what she might have been like if she could have triggered naturally. @comickry: Oliver, not Chris — but agreed. That’s my leading hypothesis for the intended result of the power, anyway. Powers don’t have intended results, Packbat. As it’s explained to Battery, each formula has a particular focus. Sometimes that’s something like ‘melting flesh’. You might get the ability to melt flesh with a touch, flesh-melty lasers, the ability to melt -yourself- and reconstitute yourself, etc. And sometimes it’s a particular form. Beams. Beams that melt flesh. Beams that destroy inorganic matter, beams that make stuff burn. Beams that are sorta, kinda in the same general neighborhood (destruction) but very different in form. Mix the two and you’re liable to get closer to a flesh-melty beam, but you could get something tertiary to that as well. (A set-shit-on-fire-a-little and melt-flesh-a-little beam, perhaps, or a beam that destroys shit and that destruction feeds a swelling flesh-melty aura). So the ‘Division’ formula, such as it is, could have had a lot of different effects. Maybe they were hoping for a clone creator, but there wouldn’t have been a targeted ‘design’ for the formula. That said, there -are- formulae that tend to give the same thing with some reliability, but that’s not a 100% given. @wildbow: That’s a good reminder, thanks. Come to think of it, even assuming that each half had a separate ‘theme’ involved, both halves are going to be variations on their respective themes. And also come to think of it, both Noelle and Oliver have imitation powers — Noelle generated duplicates of people, and Oliver changed his own form to borrow the best aspects of people, but both powers were in some way related to copying other things. Landis963 on May 28, 2013 at 19:04 said: Captain methhead – Skidmark? He’d need to cast his power over and over on the same target before he could deflect anything, let alone a bullet. (Of course, that doesn’t stop him from thinking of this in advance, but he doesn’t seem like the foresight type.) Well it seemed he could layer it to amplify the effect, and it affected the space above the mark so I imagine a competent parahuman who was not high all the time could have done something interesting with it. A competent Skidmark is one of those AU characters I know I will never see … but would like to nonetheless. His power works best in conjunction with a team, much like Battery. – very effective as a cheap defense on vehicles. As a bonus, any weapons on the vehicle will launch their bullets all the faster and all attacks against the vehicle come to nothing. – even in a ground engagement, he could adopt a variation of Jack Slash’ fighting style; distance, mobility, cover, layering his effect at strategic locations – it’d be a great heroic power for boxing enemies in and making non-lethal captures – got bomb? Ring it with multiple layers of effect and contain the explosion – hell, he could probably use it as a sort of ‘inertial compensator’ in, say, a crashing helicopter Layer the insides of tunnels and rifles/barrels… depending on how far he can extend the turbo areas, he can launch anything in the barrel/tunnel into orbit, given the right properties. Super names for super lame powers: Acid Semen: Jack Off, the Bukkake Blazer, Wood Burn Explosive Diarrhea: Bombdropper, Enola Gay, the TNT Toileteer Explosive Diarrhea: “Is that Colonic?” “No. Colonic always brought along a rubber hose and a jug of warm water…” I think you’re right. Skidmark is a perfect example of shortsightedness hampering a potential cape’s power — he was smart and imaginative enough to recruit and retain a gang (crappy as it was), to figure out how to manufacture trigger events, to read and understood the documentation on the Cauldron vials, and to deploy vulgarities with an artful fluency few approach, but he didn’t seek intelligence on his opponents, he didn’t set proper lookouts to give him advance warning of trouble, he didn’t set up traps in advance, he didn’t invent non-obvious ways of exploiting his power … in short, he coasted, taking the easy way out every time. I’m with razorsmile: a competent cape with Skidmark’s power would be a lot of fun to see. javaking369 on May 28, 2013 at 20:02 said: Cauldron would most likely consider those kinds of powers failures and kill them. Though the acid semen paired up with a chronic public masturbater would have interesting consequences. Any idea’s for names? Sorry PG took to long write so did not see the post. Acid Semen: The Peewee. Explosive Diarrhea: Flash Flood. Dammit, PG has corrupted another one. Maybe. Maybe not. Some of us were pretty corrupt to begin with. Just be glad I don’t break out into Hospital Humor. Wildbow would probably just have to lock the page. Explosive Diarrhea: The Atomic Anus, Dung Disaster, Fermi’s Farter, Asster Blaster, the Colonic Cannoneer Turd Torpedo, fecal failure, scat attack Acid Semen: The Jizzle Sizzler, Basic Instinct Now, I think we all learned some prying about Theo today, now didn’t we? Something Explosive Diarrhea: hehhehheh, Shit Storm! If only Cornholio wasn’t already taken. He needs tp for his bunghole. Taylor’s new plan Step 1: Cram enough butterflies in all, and I mean ALL, of Glenn’s orifices so that the resulting compound has the density of a white dwarf star. Seriously I want an event horizon. Step 2: Build Costume that is acutely more useful than used tissue paper. Step 3: Repeat # 1. Step 4: Recruit her own team of people that she knows can get the job done. Step 5: Repeat #1 with fire ants. Now since that is out of my system, the Vegas wards must be feeling pretty low right now. Though they did give me hope for a team that would accept Weaver. Also, I know I am going to hate myself later for this, but does anyone else find it interesting that Taylor thought about CB after Bambina talked about those lewd acts? Like she had him in the back of her mind or something. Do the shippers dare hope that in secret she did burn for him? Will someone write fan fiction about this? The answer to that last one is sadly yes. @Wildbow. Just for the record have you heard of or has anyone sent you Worm slash fiction? If so could you tell us the weirdest pairing in your mind? He might be the only one who is willing to talk to her without reservations or preconceived judgements. He knows what she has done, and is glad she is on their side. She has to worry about appearances with everyone else. The only downside is that it seems he is still using his unique brand of humor on her. Jim Lee on May 29, 2013 at 07:17 said: “Go, my pretties. Seek out and smother my enemies.” Oh lawd, is that Taylor developing a sense of humour? Even, dare I say it, snark? Cue the big mass of butterflies slowly carrying a pillow to a downed Bambina. “What, they’re butterflies. They’re not used to smothering things on their own yet.” Weaver on the Vegas team… Might work. What’s the bug population in Vegas like? If she catches someone cheating with her bugs she can send stinging insects at them. I remember someone wondering if Taylor had been on the internet, and the possibility of her finding Hate blogs, rule 34, and fanfictions. Be funny if she did and found that for some reason Skitter/Shadow Stalker Yuri fanfiction was popular. Desert scorpions… Meh. I could AAAAIIIIIIIIEEEEEEE!!! Times like that, you need the help of an invisible chupacabra with an automatic weapon. Hehe, that reminds me. There was a game on the Wii where you played a scorpion. At one point a human character describes to another what he thinks would happen if a scorpion stung someone in the balls. He ended up being the endboss. And guess where he got stung? And Taylor would do that. Do not fuck with Taylor. Even if you think she can’t hurt you. I played it, the game was fun. Kind of a genre mix of Adventure + Wrestling + Arachnids, since you played a scorpion and a spider, respectively. Who fought using Wrestling moves. While I recall that part of the reason for the lack of a e-book version of Worm is Wildbow’s desire to re-edit it once the story’s reached its conclusion, I thought this presented an interesting possibility: http://www.amazon.com/b?ie=UTF8&node=5044445011 Short form for the link averse: Amazon is selling “Serials” for the Kindle. Basically, it’s “buy it now and get the story as it’s released, chapter by chapter”. Apart from the obvious “Wildbow deserves gobs of cash” reasoning, what made me think of this for Worm is that it seems like that would make the decision of where to break up the e-books a bit easier. Sell each Arc as a separate serial and/or sell the whole thing for a much larger price. Also, even if it’s not a fit for Worm, it could be something to consider for the story that follows Worm, whatever that may be. I was made aware of this some time ago. My primary concern is that it takes away from what makes a serial stand out. Serials are interesting to me in part because they’re as flexible and versatile as they are. Amazon (and similar programs) would ask for set numbers (10k words?) at set times. Particular page lengths, particular commitments. Maybe use it as an exercise, at some point, to give yourself an idea of how it feels to write to a schedule the way some professionals do. Especially those writing genre fiction in someone else’s universe. A-la Star Wars, BattleTech, Conan, etc. It’s not always the most pleasant method for a professional author to get paid. But the experience can be, at times, invaluable. And it can teach time and resource management like nobody’s business. I already write to a schedule the same way professionals do. I mean, not to toot my own horn, but the last 240 chapters of Worm went up on schedule. If they were a touch (15-ish minutes) late, it was WordPress’ fault, not mine. Two chapters weren’t up to snuff, admittedly, but I can’t think of another work where an author maintained a strict schedule like that, produced 240 installments of a work, and didn’t have one or two snafus (without, you know, having a team backing them up). I made up for the first one by pulling an all-nighter to get the fixed version out for something like 6am, and the second, well, that wasn’t rewritable, and I didn’t count it as a completed donation interlude. I’d like to say I’ve proven my ability to keep on track, schedulewise. The issue I take with Amazon’s concept isn’t so much the strict schedule as the confining format – 10k words per installment. That might be something of an exercise, to restrict myself to set word counts. Except it doesn’t seem fun, and I got enough of that in University. 10k words is likely less than I want to write, when the updates are set as far apart as Amazon does with theirs. Frequency matters. Frequency and consistency are cornerstones of building up a readership. Investment is a cornerstone as well (people who invest time and money are more likely to be loyal), but I can’t help but feel there’s a note of negativity to that. I’d rather people read because I’m putting something out there to read, than to read the next installment because they already shelled out the money and they’d be wasting that money if they didn’t. 10k words is restrictive if I’m considering something experimental, like the parahumans online chapter, or something even more off the wall (though simultaneously more conventional) that I’m planning for Arc 27 or somewhere in that neighborhood. And 10k words twice (or once) a month is restrictive if I want to experiment and try writing a chapter a day for eight days, like I did at the end of Infestation or for arc 17. Amazon’s offer would tie my hands, it likely wouldn’t be open to allowing me to receive donations. anon on May 29, 2013 at 01:01 said: I think your current format is fine. Everyone wants money for the work they do; but I really think you’ll get a lot more traction building this story up as you have then going to kickstarter with it. I don’t know how active you are at ‘advertising’ but you should find/consider ways to get your work dropped for discussion on various media sites. I don’t know how big your readerbase is now, but if you’re looking to raise $60k, then you’ll need 4000 dedicated readers willing to spend on average $15 dollars each to purchase the book (or 3x that amount at $5 dollars). I think these are fairly reasonable numbers, when we look at how successful ceratin things are on kickstarter, in terms of money spent per contributor. I suspect you’re right, Anon. I’d like to fix up the opening some before really going gung-ho with the marketing. I mean, I could probably contact a newspaper and see if they’d run a story about Worm as a success. It’s something that hasn’t seen a lot of exposure, there’s stuff to say about Amazon, and it’s a blending of technology and literature at a time when people are wondering what’s going to become of books. But, again, I want to fix up the early stuff some before I start aggressively pointing people this way. Maybe that’s silly, but it’s sort of pride. Okay, I can respect that outlook. 1 – You are making some money. 2 – You are having fun (I hope). 3 – Your number of readers is growing. 4 – Do not mess with the escalation of a winning team (Brasilian saying: Em time que está ganhando não se mexe). Do Amazon serials have to be new, original properties? You could try doing your rewrite/edit of Worm itself as a Worm Deluxe serial. Not that I condone locking yourself in to Amazon, as a non-Kindle ereader user… UnlikelyLass on May 28, 2013 at 22:42 said: Someone else has probably noticed this before, but — isn’t ‘Weaver’ almost a pun? Taylor -> tailor, who works with fabric to make garments, vs. Weaver, someone who makes fabric by weaving… The real question is whether or not it was intentional. Me at least you made aware of that pun. Didn’t see it. So, nice work, if intentional or not, and thank you for pointing it out 😀 Is there enough cultural crossover for Taylor to sarcastically refer to the boogeyman as Lord Voldemort? Hobbes on May 29, 2013 at 00:18 said: Knowing what little we know about her reference pools she’d probably compare Contessa to Typhon or something. Then there’s the awkward silence, broken by Clockblockers snickering. There are female titans, even if I cannot remember one that would fit… Mnemosyne maybe? Mnemosyne was personification of Memory, and the mother of the muses (which, perhaps, is her real purpose in myth). I don’t see Contessa having kids, from Taylor’s or any other person’s perspective, on either side of the Fourth Wall. Inb4 PG spins a chain of logic to “prove” me wrong. Well, I suppose if you wanted to write a slashfic, whatever. So far, I just see Contessa as some empty shell that can be sent out to do what’s needed to be done and even take complex action into account to do it, but otherwise without personality, character, or feeling of her own. I suppose if you want to have sex with a robot, have at her. Then again, this is the internet, so of course that has an audience. Blank slates are great for fanfiction, though. They give you elbow room where you’re less likely to strain fans credibility. Contessa could be almost anyone at this point, from cruelly used tool of the Doctor, to the one creation of hers she didn’t keep a handle on and which took over Cauldron. A fan depiction of her doesn’t have to match up with a hundredth of the datapoints that, say, exist for Miss Militia. I don’t get it. What’s so funny about Typhoon? Scion predates J. K. Rowling’s inspiration for Harry Potter by eight years, I believe — it’s unlikely that the series exists in Earth Bet. Wildbow: when did the first Earth Aleph parahuman appear? Good question. Though there is that weird magic guy mentioned in England when the wards named skitter. Though I raised the question of whether parahumans are in all of their literature written since the 80s for those that want to be realistic. So are their parahumans in the wormverse version of Twilight, Harry potter, stephen king, etc.? Will we get to see the interview Taylor has/had with the thinkers interviewing her? Jessie Laurent on May 29, 2013 at 07:24 said: If I’m comprehending this correctly, there is a Bonus Chapter tomorrow? If I had to vote, I’d vote for another regular chapter Thursday or something, but that’s just because, well… This doesn’t even come close to qualifying for a cliffhanger, but at this point in the Arc, we (the readers) still don’t have our feet on the ground. I, at least, still am unsure of Weaver/Skitter’s position in the grand scheme of things (feeling unsure as she is, perhaps?) and so to cut away wouldn’t be the option I’d prefer, if only because I’m not ‘solid’ enough on this Arc to be able to hold it all together and not lose something from an extra two-days wait (though, I suppose, I could just read through the whole Arc on Saturday, again.) The other possibility (though you hardly have to take my advice, of course) would be to have an Interlude that directly features Skitter: Similar to the Ambassador’s one, in nature…maybe the thinker panel, or something like that? Something that clarifies more about Skitter/Weaver and her situation. Eh, just a few thoughts. If there is a bonus chapter I hope its between the thinkers either discussing Taylor or between Taylor/thinkers. For some reason I picture a confrence like in a giant monster movie where they sit around talking about the monster and how it can’t be stopped. With Taylor being the monster. I mean that in a good way of course. Honestly this arc really is made for interlude chapters. Theirs the time skips. What the Undersiders have been up to. How the cape community is reacting to all the shocks that have been happening. All sorts of things. three rights make a left. on May 29, 2013 at 14:35 said: Is there a bonus chapter tonight? Is it sad that the prospect of there being one made me shriek with joy like an excited schoolgirl? (Or an excited schoolboy with a high pitched voice.) Admiral Skippy is the Chuck Taylor of the comments section, it seems. Pro wrestler who screams like a girl. He’s funny. And yes, pulling out an obscure reference like that does remind me of a classic bit of dialogue from the movie Camp Nowhere: Kid nicknamed “Mud”: “What are you listening to?” Christopher Lloyd as Dennis Van Welker: “Winston Churchill. He’s like the Jimi Hendrix of the spoken word.” Mud: “Who’s Jimi Hendrix?” Dennis: “He’s like the Michael Jordan of the electric guitar.” It’s scheduled (click the ‘donate’ button on the top of the page to see the schedule of bonus updates, such as it is, and the number in the queue). That said, I’m traveling (currently on a train) and it may be tough to get the chapter done what with possible stuff going on after I arrive. I hope to, intend to, but can’t promise. According to the donate page there is. keyonte0 on June 3, 2013 at 20:54 said: I wouldn’t figure a Satyr to be waxed Holy carp, those are some flamboyant heroes. They seem like they’d fit better into a carnival than the Justice League… Was Dragon’s suit just how the PRT brought the butterflies to Weaver or was Dragon the only one who cares? I hope the former… And wow. The heroes are fighting a losing battle or six, aren’t they? “Go, my pretties,” I said, monotone. Nah, they are hard (wo)men making hard decisions. Given they’re pretty much done with their superpower testing, it’s not worth continuing to hound superpower buyers. Alec Supertramp on November 27, 2013 at 13:35 said: Anyone else feel like Weaver <<< Skitter? I gotta say, I'm working my way through this series (quite enjoying it so far) and I just can't get behind this whole hero thing, especially knowing [SPOILER]. I know it's part of Taylor's whole deal to be inclined to help/save people, but the story was more fun to read when she was an Undersider, and you can't deny she has some villainistic tendencies of her own. wildbow on November 27, 2013 at 15:02 said: No spoilers (even in tags), please. I have a pretty strict policy. The hero thing is going to need revision before publication. A couple things to consider. 1. Taylor was always a hero at heart, even as an Undersider. It’s nice that she can finally achieve her dream…and discover that, for one reason and the others, she isn’t really all that, compared to her villain activities. 2. Taylor was Skitter for a few months. She was Weaver for over two years. We see 20-odd arcs on one and a handful of the other. ciss on February 27, 2014 at 07:39 said: I’m re-reading Worm. This transition felt strange. We don’t know how she spends her days in prison, what her status is (has she joined the NY wards, but is mainly in prison? Is she allowed out for some tests or special missions? ) Taylor feels so very reactive compared to how she came across before. I can’t imagine that she doesn’t think up new, Weaver-y strategies in her cell, but we don’t see it happening. Her fears and personal transformation is not shown much. And I can’t imagine why she doesn’t pester Dragon and Defiant about Dragons restrictions! If there’s a reason why she doesn’t ask – or how they evade these questions, please show us. The Taylor I know and love wouldn’t give up and wouldn’t just not ask. Otherwise, the story is great, but this is a missing element. Nix on March 13, 2014 at 17:32 said: Imagine how pleased I am to see that a (minor, one-chapter) hero shares my pseudonym! It’s a little bit more disconcerting to find that Nix is female… but, of course, Nyx was* a goddess. Nix (the heroine) just can’t spell. 😛 Still on first read, and, well, I don’t know why I’m getting an increasing feeling that none of this is going to end well, that we’ll end up with an evacuated planet and gigadeaths, and almost all of our protagonists biting it? (Well, OK, it’s been foretold for ages, but there’s no sign of a solution in sight, and the interludes keep on setting up more and more disturbing possibilities.) Still, as long as it goes better than _Fine Structure_’s death rate, we can call it a happy ending. Ya Boy Dobes on July 15, 2014 at 02:35 said: I’m wondering why Cauldron doesn’t do more to abuse meta-power cheese if they’re really interested in creating insanely powerful capes to fight off the end of the world. One possibility: 1. Recruit Pretender/Regent/Heartbreaker/Cherish/Grue/Anyone else who can use another cape’s power without permission 2. Abduct Panacea/Bonesaw/Blasto/Anyone else who can adjust the Corona Pollentia or otherwise tinker with powers 3. Use the first on the second, experiment until you get some power far beyond anything we’ve seen so far. shapeshiftingpedro on May 31, 2015 at 20:14 said: As soon as I read: I thought of bugs dancing down the streets in conga lines. Da-da-duh-duh-da-daaah! Da-da-duh-duh-da-daaah… This arc is really feeling like a tv show. I can definately see how Taylor is having trouble adjusting from villainy to heroism. She’s spent a larger part of her cape career using intimidation tactics to win, now she needs to learn how to be the type of cape that inspires hope, not instill fear. True! Because to the extent that this paradigm holds, they’re not involved. As long as the heroes and villains (consciously or otherwise) play by the cops-and-robbers rules, their conflicts are limited to the two sides, with civilians purely as spectators. The heroes fight the villains; the villains fight the heroes. There’s nothing to gain from attacking civilians directly- that’d be like trying to score points against the crowd instead of the opposing team. You don’t gain prestige from it, and it doesn’t improve your skills; you’re not facing a challenge. A healthy hero/villain dynamic would tend toward Saturday morning cartoon villainy and victimless crimes, like the Undersiders’ bank robbery and the attack at the Forsberg Gallery. Civilians suffer property damage and have their lives disrupted in the short term, but insurance covers the losses and there are no lasting injuries. No permanent damage to the spectators, just like no permanent damage to the other side- because this is all just a way for both sides to stay in shape for the main event, when they’re going to have to rely on each other. Joshua Zollinger on March 16, 2016 at 00:32 said: “Tiamat to join in t-minus eight minutes.” Minor detail, and I don’t even know if you’ll ever read this, but this phrase isn’t how countdowns work. The “t” in t-minus represents the time of the event, and the rest of the phrase is the current time in relation to that. So if they are at t minus eight minutes, that means there are eight minutes until the event. You would never say that something will happen in t-minus x minutes; if you’re using future tense to say something will happen you would just say it will happen in x minutes. Count to 10 on August 22, 2016 at 17:10 said: Yeah, soft armor is basically useless against a sniper rifle. Even the ceramic types are only going to take a single hit. https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/223054.pdf «One of Starlet’s implosions sent Prince and I tumbling.» should be “me”. Implosion (subject) sent (verb) me (direct object). A couple things: Skitter is useless as a hero. Her power is designed for attacking, not defending, not to mention her hands being tied to not use her most useful bugs. She’s only powerful when there’s time to prepare. Not to mention she is entirely useless against any Endbringer. Her bugs can’t survive in water, can’t get close to a dynakinetic, and she can’t escape from a psychic bird woman, regardless of the fact they would do fuck all damage, (unless they were charged by Flechette or something, which would be undeniably cool). This was the worst possible ending for her. Not to mention now that the Travellers are back in Earth Aleph they lost two huge heavy hitters in Ballistic and Sundancer. Why don’t the PRT let Birdcage inmates out for short periods of time to fight against Endbringers? It’s not like anyone would miss them if they died, and Lung seems to be the only guy who can go head to head with both Leviathan and Behemoth and almost certainly come out on top. The situation is, frankly, fucked. Skitter can’t do anything because her hands are tied maintaining the status quo that she so hates (because she thought becoming a hero was somehow a good idea?) and they’re losing every advantage in the fight against the Endbringers. Screw this, nihilism in a story I’m addicted to is going to make me very conflicted. I’m going to try to sleep now. Lyova on October 9, 2017 at 04:02 said: “The Vegas Wards had arrived, perched on top of the nearest wall.” Mistake? Satyr & his team can’t be under-18, right? See? You should have never gone to the Protectorate. Yup. I completely agree! TreeDimesFast on December 5, 2018 at 16:57 said: Great choice on the names of the ships, Wildbow. Kulshedra – Dragon in Albanian mythology Tiamat – Dragon-looking god in ancient Babylon, or the dragon godess in D&D Leave a Reply to Joshua Zollinger Cancel reply	cc/2019-30/en_middle_0059.json.gz/line1800
__label__cc	0.5523	0.4477	Oh, how small we were, in the grand scheme of it all. Our planet was but a speck in the midst of the milky way galaxy, which was a speck in the midst of the known universe. We were fighting to save it, and yet it could disappear without anyone in the nearest solar system even noticing. Small, insignificant. Little more than ants before a giant. A pencil-thin beam lanced out from his fingertips. A sweep of his hand, waist-level, and it cut through the crowd. Cut through thighs, knees, calves, feet. Swept towards us. No time to act, to save anyone. Only to get out of the way. I jumped, activating the flight pack. I looked to my teammates, my breath trapped in my throat as I waited to see who was hit. Parian still had the ‘stuffed’ arm connected to a nearby building. A sweep of the arm caught a solid twenty people, catching them in the bend of the cloth and lifting them off the ground as the beam passed by. Rachel, mounted, wasn’t so lucky. The beam caught three of the dog’s legs. Rachel fell, tumbling to the ground. The people Parian had tossed aside, Parian included, fell in heaps, landing awkwardly. But alive, all but one of them untouched. In the chaos that followed, I could see the blood. This wasn’t a beam that seared, like some lasers did, and it didn’t cauterize as it cut. It disintegrated, leaving arteries free to pump blood out onto the grass and dirt. A number were laying there in shock, but there were some who were fighting, even as they bled out. Scion was momentarily caught up in a storm of shards that seemed to give him pause. The Suits were among the injured, and King of Cups was patching up the damage. Limbs were replaced with pitch black simulacrums that caught the light in odd ways that only highlighted the very edges. I saw Lung among the artificial limb recipients. He’d stayed in Brockton Bay in the company of Miss Militia while the rest of us had said goodbyes and made arrangements, so it wasn’t puzzling that he was here. No, the confusing bit was that the fight had only been going for two or so minutes, and he was already transformed halfway to the state he’d been in when the Undersiders had first rescued me on the rooftop. Transforming five or ten times as fast? He’d been in the company of Panacea… had she done something? Canary had said Lung had avoided picking fights during his stay in the Birdcage, relying only on his reputation. Maybe this was a one-shot deal. It didn’t take the capes King of Cups had healed very long to get their bearings, scrambling to get away, or backing away as they used their abilities. A cape with deep black skin and an overly tall white helmet was sliding groups around like a chess player slid a piece into position. Another cape, just beside him, was altering the battlefield, getting obstacles out of the way. The ground swallowed walls, supplies and vehicles like it was suddenly water, rippling as they dropped beneath the surface, then changing, becoming solid once more. Cover didn’t work as a concept, I supposed, when his attacks cut through it so easily. Still, I wasn’t sure it was the brightest move. There had to be a more optimal way of rearranging the battlefield. Putting some people on higher ground and some on lower, without limiting their ability to dodge. A glance over my shoulder showed the Simurgh standing by the portal, wings folded so the ends were aimed at Scion. She had reconfigured her halo, and every single one of the guns were pointed in the same direction. But she didn’t shoot. She waited. My swarm-decoys massed in the air around Scion, some dividing into further copies. He continued to ignore them, targeting specific capes. A sphere of light was tossed in Glaistig Uaine’s direction. She didn’t move or fight back. Instead, she was saved by the guy with the tall helmet, shifted out of the way. Bishop, Chessmaster, Curling-guy? Unruffled, she called three spirits forth, then took flight, positioning herself high in the sky, entirely out of the fight. Running? Scion attacked again, picking different targets. King of Cups created more phantom limbs, an array of twelve or so arms of varying size that spread out from his shoulders, and caught a teammate’s hand. He was pulled out of the way, but the sphere swerved in the air, drifting his way. It crashed into one of his shoulders, and dashed the arms to smithereens. King of Cups tumbled, then used his power to patch up the damage. I wasn’t sure how that worked. The lines of pain on his face seemed to ease as his power replaced the injured parts. Was there some sort of interaction there? A connection of nerves, arteries and veins? Queen of Swords had a shortsword in hand, stepping forward as if to shield King of Cups with her own body. Her sword seemed more ceremonial than useful. I’d seen capes that used props to focus their powers, and she appeared to be one of them. As she swung the sword, lines of light were cast out around her, connecting to various capes in the crowd. Chaos, really. So much going on, so many capes, all trying to focus on a single target. A sphere of darkness made contact with series of ribbons that spiraled around one another, and they were both consumed in a spiral of intermingled effects well before reaching Scion. Someone was taking my cue, filling the sky with what looked like stone statues of capes, stiff with arms at their sides. The battlefield, the crowd, the sky, it was impossible to keep track of it all. Even if I sacrificed decoys, I still had to think about what was going on. I’d be able to sense that bugs were dying here, that something was moving from one point to the next, but I wouldn’t necessarily know who was doing what. What did the ribbons do? What was Queen of Swords doing with her power, connecting capes? Worst of all, for everything we were doing, Scion wasn’t reacting. He wasn’t getting seriously hurt, and he wasn’t taking any of the bait. I dropped out of the sky, landing beside Rachel with a little more force than was maybe smart. Conserved fuel, and got me out of Scion’s line of sight, but I felt a twang in my new right leg that suggested maybe it wasn’t as flexible as it should have been. “He’s bleeding out,” Rachel said. It was Bastard, wounded, three of his massive legs severed, blood forming a ridiculously large puddle beneath us. “He’s safe inside, isn’t he? The smaller, real version of Bastard?” “Same blood in both of them. The outside won’t fall apart before he loses too much blood,” she said. “I think.” “Then leave him,” I said. “Go look for babytalk. Get one of the Lab Rat doses, bring it back.” I could see the stress on her expression. “Go,” I said. “I’ll look after him.” Rachel bolted. I turned, saw a cape lying on the ground with her eyes open, staring at the sky. Paradoxical, stupid, selfish, arrogant, and short-sighted, to even think about giving my attention to a dog -to a wolf- before trying to revive the woman. Still, I took my knife to her cloak and wadded it up to stop the blood loss. When I couldn’t cover enough space with my hands, I used my body to press it against the site of the injury. I told myself she was beyond saving, that other injured capes were being helped by King of Cups, and that Bastard wasn’t getting the same treatment, that he wouldn’t. But the reality was that I’d cast aside the strict ideas of right and wrong, that I’d told myself I’d be Taylor instead of Weaver or Skitter, and this was what I wanted to do. Because I was a hypocrite, I was selfish, arrogant, short-sighted and even stupid at times. Because I could only face this situation with what I knew, and I knew that Bitch wouldn’t fight any further if we just let Bastard die, and if our team started falling apart, I wouldn’t know what to do at all. Lung limped forward, not to fight Scion, but to shout something. His voice was nearly drowned out in the noise. Not entirely, it was too loud to be entirely masked, but nearly. “Remove it.” I didn’t follow his meaning until bugs moved past his legs, touching the hard surface of the artificial leg. Unchanged, unaltered by his power. His regular leg was almost a foot longer. The tall-helm cape slid some of the Suits out of the way. They started shouting, asking to be moved back. He responded in French. Disorganization, a lack of coherency. A lack of organization. I clenched my jaw and did what I could to stop the blood from welling out of the stumps of Bastard’s legs. This wasn’t a monster that was four or five stories tall. It was a single individual in a crowd, with capes using powers that would inevitably cause more harm to any bystander they accidentally struck than they could possibly deal to the intended target. Queen of Swords touched the tip of her sword to one of the main lines of the diagram she’d created. A circular blob expanded from the point like blood welling from a prick from the blade, two-dimensional, dark blue and translucent. She drew a gun from her hip with her free hand, aimed it at the blob and fired. The bullet hit the blob and pushed against it, slowing down with every fraction of an inch it traveled. It came to a complete stop, the previously flat surface of the blob-portal-thing now more of a cone, poked out of shape by the bullet’s movement. For a half-second, I thought it would be like a trampoline, sending the bullet back to sender. Then it punched through, and I could see ribbons, fire, darkness and innumerable other effects trailing behind it as it resumed normal speed. It struck Scion as he started to fire another beam of light at the crowd opposite me and the Undersiders. Scion stumbled, the aftermath of a dozen different powers rippling over, around and through him, and the beam was cut off by one of the powers. She began changing the map, breaking some connections, expanding others. Scion turned her way. It was just the right moment for our first reinforcements to arrive. Distorted terrain marked Vista’s arrival, as she folded the earth around Scion, surrounding him with walls of earth. I looked to see, and saw her and Kid Win standing on a twelve-foot high bulge of earth. Kid Win was getting himself set up, hunkering down, while Vista stood at a point slightly above him. Tattletale was with them. Hanging back, as if using Kid Win as a shield, her eyes on the battlefield, a phone in hand. Most likely to relay information. Others were filing between the Simurgh’s legs. Gavel, now clean-cut, his once-shaggy beard now cut to a style that would have been ludicrous if he didn’t have the reputation to back it up; two perfectly straight lines that met at a sharp 90-degree point at the chin. His hair had been buzzed, flat at the top. His mask covered only his forehead, eyes and nose, his lips were set a firm line. He wore a skintight black shirt without sleeves and heavy canvas pants, with boots that looked like they could be used to crush stone. His hammer, by contrast, was solid steel, with sharp lines that seemed to parallel the clean lines of his hair and beard, a pole that seemed too big to wrap one’s hands around. The entire thing was as big as he was, probably three or four times the weight. And he was big. Bodybuilder big, broad-shouldered in a way that you rarely saw, even in movies. Crane the Harmonious was just behind Gavel, joined by three capes I assumed were her disciples. Two of them looked like they were ready to enter a battle, ducking low, moving like trained soldiers entering a battlefield. A third looked like a scared kid. Reasonable, something to be expected from people who were walking into a situation like this. Crane, for her part, walked with her hands clasped behind her back, chin up, like she was completely oblivious to what was going on. Scion broke through the wall of hard rock, and it seemed to actually take a modicum of effort. He directed an attack at Vista, Kid Win and Tattletale. A sphere, just like the one that had totaled the Dragonfly. Gavel threw the hammer into the air, and it blocked the shot. The resulting explosion knocked a dozen capes off their feet, struck some of Kid Win’s airborne guns out of the air and very nearly knocked Tattletale from her perch. Crane’s disciples were bowled over, but Crane managed to turn with the shockwave, only taking a step back, remaining upright. The hammer descended, unaffected by the explosion, and Gavel caught the handle in his two hands. Scion turned his attention to Gavel, throwing one more sphere. Another detonation. Capes in the area were scrambling to get away from Scion’s new designated target. Gavel had stopped. He swayed, then swung his hammer around, striking it against the ground before gripping the pole, as if he’d only needed something to lean against. His skin was a little darker where it had been scorched, and golden light danced around the edges of the wounds like the orange at the edges of burned paper, where the paper had burned but not burned completely. I could see the Simurgh move, putting one of her larger wings in front of Kid Win. Stopping him from firing. I really hoped she was on our side in all of this. Letting Gavel handle this with only the support from the sidelines seemed feeble at best. Scion suffered a continual onslaught of powers and projectiles from every direction, and the distraction these shots seemed to give Gavel the chance he needed to find his second wind. The vigilante and ex-cell-block leader of the Birdcage advanced, picking up speed as he found his stride, dragging his hammer beside him. Scion used a beam instead, directing it at Gavel. Which was interesting. Maybe. A beam was what I would have used to deal with Gavel. His power made it so he could only take so much damage at a time, and reduced the severity of any damage to a set amount. Shooting him with a hail of bullets would be little different from shooting him with one or two bullets, and any given bullet would only gouge out a teaspoon of flesh. Excalibur’s scabbard. He could have done so much more with the concept, but he’d gone with a hammer instead of a sword. I stared, watching as he blocked the worst of the beam with the hammer. Scion stopped, interrupted as Queen of Swords shot him with another power-infused bullet, then resumed the assault. A spray of bullets wouldn’t do much to Gavel, but a steady stream of them could whittle him down. Blind in the face of the brilliant light, Gavel marched forward. He moved his damaged hammer out of the way, taking the beam in the face and throat instead. Amazing, perplexing… and I could only stare, watching Gavel’s inhuman tenacity, wondering if Scion was using the beam because it was one of the most convenient and effective tools available to him, or because he intuitively understood Gavel’s power. He was supposed to be the source of powers. It made sense that he’d know the particulars about them. It was a scary thought. Gavel got close enough to reach out and fumble, putting a hand on Scion’s face, two fingers finding Scion’s eye sockets. Scion pulled back a little, maintaining the beam as it cut into Gavel. I could smell something like burning hair. Clouds of it, choking. Gavel toppled. No, he was leveraging his full weight, swinging his hammer like an Olympic hammer-thrower might swing theirs. Not even a complete rotation, but he struck Scion dead-on. Scion hit the dirt, was plowed into a furrow fifteen feet long. He half-climbed to his feet, half-floated, and was struck again. Another swing of the hammer. It wasn’t hurting him, but it was an inconvenience, and that was something good in my books. I could feel the hot blood seeping through my costume, running over my shoulders and down my front. My back was already sticky with it. Probably not good for my flight pack. Rachel was running through the crowd, shoving anyone that wasn’t actively fighting to get them out of her way. Gavel hit Scion a third time, and the hammer, damaged earlier by the beam, fell to pieces. For the fourth hit, Gavel used the toe of his boot. But each hit was dramatically less effective than the last. Scion reacted to the kick, floating back a little, but it wasn’t much at all. Gavel had once been judge, jury and executioner to criminals in Australia. He’d announce his intentions publicly, swearing vengeance and listing their crimes, and then he’d go after them. Generally speaking, he transferred his power from himself to his hammer and from his hammer to his target, conducting invincibility. His target would fly through the air until they hit something, at which point they would be pulverized. If he was feeling merciful, or if he didn’t want to give them a chance, he simply pulverized them with the swing. But Scion wasn’t pulverized. The golden man reached out and jammed a hand in the largest wound the beam had created. A golden light flared, and Gavel disintegrated on the inside. Flakes of burned flesh traced with bits of golden light flew into the air as either half of Gavel’s body hit the ground. Lung, on the sidelines, was as monstrous as he’d been when he fought Kaiser, Sundancer and I. But he waited. We needed time. Time for Lung. Time for the Simurgh to find her window of opportunity, time for reinforcements… Gavel, ruthless vigilante, monster, had bought us a good minute. Maybe two. Scion targeted Vista, Kid Win and the others. His target before Gavel had grabbed his attention. Very formulaic, very steady, picking out targets based on who was posing the biggest threat… or the biggest potential inconvenience, and then eliminating them. Gavel was out of the picture, so he moved back down to the next on his list. Vista folded more space, then changed the shape of the hill she’d created. It wasn’t fast enough to get her, Kid Win or Tattletale out of the way of Scion’s shot. The Simurgh protected them with her wing. Get out of there, I thought. Then I did one better. I broke up one swarm decoy and moved the bugs in their direction. The bugs flew too slow. They couldn’t cover that much ground in a matter of seconds. Get out of there. He’s going to come after you, and people aren’t going to be able to save you every time. Scion rose into the air, floating. Get out of there. Queen of Swords shot him again. Scion turned, slow, his eyes falling on her. Ribbons, perhaps the most identifiable projectile, sailed through the air, snagging on him and then fixing in the air, as if the other ends were attached to some invisible tether. It was one of the Swords doing it. He floated a bit forward, and the tethers broke, falling apart. Two projectiles, again. Softballing us so hard he was almost taking pity. Rachel approached. She had a device in hand. One of the matchboxes, Lab Rat juice on demand. I shifted position as she leaned over Bastard. “How?” she asked. There was a look in her eyes that suggested she was upset, concerned, worried. She looked at me, at the amount of blood on and around me, and I could even see a note of anguish, hidden behind stern eyes and a mouth that was pressed into a lipless line. “Turn it around,” I said. I couldn’t reach it without pulling away from where I was applying pressure. King of Cups blocked the shots using some of the largest arms. Gorilla arms with massive clawed hands, fanning out from his shoulders, blocking the shot and serving as walls to shield the teammates beside and behind him. Scion closed the distance, swept a hand to one side, and dashed all but one or two of the artificial arms to pieces. He caught King of Cups by the jaw. But he didn’t hurt the man. Instead, taking advantage of the pause where capes with ranged attacks weren’t firing into the midst of the Suits, Scion held King of Cups in the air, and extended a hand. Not attacking, but indicating. The hand swept over the capes in question. “How?” Rachel said, with a bit more emotion. I reached up, took her hand and pushed it, with the device, down on Bastard’s shoulder. I turned back to Scion as the high-pitched beeping started. He watched King of Cups as he moved his hand. The man’s expression, which I couldn’t make out, seemed to give Scion the answer he wanted. With his free hand, Scion flew forward, seizing the Queen of Swords before she could get out of the way. He bent over, and he pushed the pair to the ground. When they were pinned, he kept pushing one of them. I could hear a strangled scream. He had a grip on Queen of Sword’s face, and he was simply pushing her head into the ground. King of Cup’s screams were a different sort; not of pain, but horror. Capes pelted Scion, grabbed hold of his neck, arms and legs with chains, but failed to affect him. Vista’s power made the earth rise around Scion, but when he didn’t react, she returned it to normal, leaving room for others to try. It wasn’t just offensive attempts at rescue, either. “…can’t teleport them, blocking my power…” “…make him stop, make him stop…” “…someone? Anyone!…” I craned my head, looking. The Simurgh was still blocking Kid Win, and she wasn’t shooting. Glaistig Uaine was in the sky above, orbited by three spirits I couldn’t quite make out. Foil, still gone. It might as well have been him, the King and the Queen, all alone, for all it mattered. He jolted a bit, his shoulders and back dropping an inch or two, as something gave way. The lines and diagrams Queen of Swords had created disappeared, thinning out, then fading away entirely. I saw King’s legs kick, heard his screams intensify. There was a new kind of horror in the sound. He manifested new arms, monstrous ones, insectile ones, bird talons and tentacles, even the occasional indistinct head of an animal, grabbing Scion, trying to tear him away, tear him apart. Futile, just like all the other measures. Scion wasn’t even visible beneath the effects that surrounded him. Pulling the wings off flies. Kicking over anthills. As evils went, Scion wasn’t much more than a child in maturity. We weren’t much more than bugs to him. “It’s not working,” Rachel said. “I- what?” I asked. “The dose.” I tore my eyes away from the scene. The matchbox was beeping, but it wasn’t quite the frantic beep I’d heard when mine was going off. “The dog’s physiology, it might read as too healthy,” I said. “He’s lost half his blood,” she said, her expression grim. “He’s not even moving now.” “I don’t know,” I said. “If we get the vials from inside, maybe we can manually apply it?” “Mm,” Rachel grunted. King of Cup’s screams reached a fever pitch. I turned to look, wincing. “Hurry,” I said. “I need to get in there.” “And do what?” Do what? I didn’t know. All at once, the chaos was replaced by stillness. It wasn’t a typical silence. Typical silence would have left my ears ringing with the sudden shift from noise to an utter lack thereof. Wasn’t a typical stillness. If it was, I would have felt my heartbeat. My senses had been replaced. I watched as two massive beings made their way through the void. One was familiar to me, in a dim way I couldn’t articulate. Not that I could think, really. I experienced, I took things in, and I understood it. They were flesh and they weren’t flesh. Something I couldn’t parse, given my frame of reference. I could understand how they moved, and I knew it was because of the senses I was using, senses that allowed me to be aware of these things, to grasp them in terms of how they slid between realities. I focused on the familiar one, and compared it to its kin. It was shucking away fragments of itself, discarding them. It kept select ones. Abilities focused on violence, on defense. On mobility and battle and any number of other things. It exercised a variety of the fragments. It was taking over for another role, a role that the partner wasn’t fulfilling. The partner was busy, I noted, sending broadcasts. Messages, to something distant. But I couldn’t interpret the partner in the same kind of depth I could interpret the more familiar one. I turned my attention to it. Saw what it saw. Images of the future. I was connected somehow to every part of the being, and I was aware of everything they were aware of. I had only to look. It looked for a world. It found the world it was looking for. It looked for a particular variation of that world, and it found it. And it looked further. It viewed itself and its partner on that world. The possible forms they could take, the end results. It looked beyond that, to possible rebellions. In the midst of that, in the middle of a trillion images that passed through my awareness in a single instant, over an indeterminate span of travel and viewing, one scene was acutely familiar. The entity as a golden man. Capes littering the surface around him, every single one of them unconscious, dead, bleeding, crushed, or burned. He was untouched, coated only in their remains, thick blood and other, pulpier substances dripping and dropping from his fingers in strings. He viewed the scene, as he viewed all of the scenes, through the senses of the fragments that had gone ahead, of fragments that had arrived after he had. They were embedded in hosts, which meant he viewed things through the eyes of the host, and through the abilities the hosts expressed. I willed for it to continue, to go deeper, to provide more details. But things moved along. If anything, my efforts dashed the scene from the ongoing stream of sensory inputs. Instead, I got a glimpse the futures one step further. Variations. Every one of them, futures where the entity had survived. Futures where the hosts hadn’t fought back. Futures where they had fought back and inevitably lost. He was plotting a course to a particular destination in time and causality, just as he’d plotted a course to Earth. There were criteria, and in each of the visions, things occurred. These visions were blocked from any particular attention. Hidden away by some treatment of the fragments, treatment of the entity’s own recollections, so the visions couldn’t be used against it. But I could see the essential elements. He would live, because he’d given himself enough power. With the criteria he had set, there was no way for the hosts to win, unless he deviated. With the granted powers, there was no way for them to do any meaningful harm to him. The entity could see the permutations, the ways they moved and interacted. He called on a particular fragment, yet to be released in search of a host, and- Familiar. A familiar presence. -he could get an understanding of the hosts, filling in blanks that the future-sight and his own mind couldn’t. See how they moved, how they cooperated, how they didn’t cooperate. He could see the strategies they could possibly employ, the strategies they couldn’t. Again, these were censored, blocked in this three-dimensional, xenosensory, interactive memory. But he could see, and he knew they would fail, as much by their own hand as by his. He could see how all paths he had considered led to a fulfillment of his mission, his eventual meeting with his partner, in their other forms. He could see how he wins in every circumstance where he has to fight. Countless paths to victory. He would spend the rest of the journey to this planet in picking one, was already setting things up so that paths to defeat would no longer be possible. We lose. It was my thought, not the entity’s. The thought stuttered, distorted. Repeated over and over so fast it seemed to become only a jumble of sounds. Another repetition, where each syllable seemed to take days to form. I opened my eyes, and I saw the scene from the vision. Scion standing in the middle of the settlement, blood and brains dripping from his hand. The two words continued, as if in the background, distorted as I turned my head. It was one of the capes that had arrived with Crane. He was doing it, distorting the memory. Making it so the memory wouldn’t fade. Let me forget, I thought. I don’t want to know this. Let me be ignorant, fight to the end. Scion stood, waiting patiently. No point tearing us to pieces when we weren’t aware enough for it to matter. I looked at him, and I saw the entity from my memory. I saw the vast thing he was, and I knew that we were specks to him. He’d held back when he’d used the beam to slice through legs, when he used mere physical force to crush Queen of Sword’s skull. He’d held back, in a fashion, when he’d obliterated the United Kingdom of Earth Bet. King of Cups howled wordlessly, using his power, and the phantom limbs started emerging from every surface around us. My back arched as one thrust itself free from my chest. A tentacle. A claw emerged from the ground by my neck. Every surface in sight, marked with the ebon-black limbs, faces, even the upper bodies of indistinct lifeforms. Some humanoid, some very not. From horizon to horizon, the landscape turned dark as phantom images peppered it, growing denser with every passing second. With none of the care of the time that he’d taken with Queen of Swords, Scion crushed King of Cup’s skull. The phantom images crumbled into black ash. “No,” Rachel said. “Fuck it. Fuck him.” “Rachel?” I mumbled. I turned my head, felt my head swim with the aftermath of the vision, or the memory-retention power, and I saw the matchbox, the contents spilled. The ground beneath was darker. Dirt soaked with the fluid. “Was trying to open it when the vision hit,” Rachel said. The Simurgh screamed. Scion gave her his full attention. She used her power, parting the sea of fallen, reeling capes with her telekinesis. Capes between her and Scion were tossed aside, and capes behind Scion were dismissed in the same way. I could see people bounce off the ground, limbs bending in awkward, painful ways as they landed. Bugs, to be swatted aside when they got in the way. Then she fired the guns. Hers and Kid Win’s. The shotgun approach. Cover as wide an area as possible, cover as many bases as possible, in the hopes that something hits. I covered my eyes, turning my head. When that wasn’t enough, I covered my eyes with my arm. There was little sound, but there was a horrific vibration, something that made me worry my insides were turning to jelly. When I could see again, Scion was gone. But he wasn’t defeated. I knew that much. The Simurgh, moving with a deliberate assurance, began reloading each of the guns. Extraneous pieces of the halo served as battery packs, as ammunition. Scion passed through the portal behind her. As if in slow motion, I could see her folding herself forward, her wings wrapping around her body. Preparing for the attack that was about to come. He hit her, and he sent her flying through the crowd. Capes were turned into bloody smears as she collided with them, and the Simurgh was driven to the very far edge of the settlement, to the beaches at the edge of the bay. The countless guns were pulverized. Almost casually, Scion created a beam that speared through the center of the hill Vista had made, and the hill crumbled, the effect collapsing inconsistently, the hill and everyone on it falling violently to the ground below. “Tattletale,” I said. “Go,” Rachel said. I looked at her, at Bastard, who barely seemed to be breathing anymore. In the distance, Scion followed up his attack on the Simurgh. She continued to focus on defending herself, raising sand in false Simurgh decoys, manipulating water, all to misdirect, as she kept her wings folded around her like a shell. “Go,” she said. “Help Tattletale.” There was something in her voice. Something that suggested she did care after all. Imp’s ribbing aside, Rachel did value Tattletale on some level. I tried to stand, and felt the strength of the congealed blood that bound me to the cloth, which was in turn bound to Bastard’s foreleg stumps. My swarm and a bit of pulling on my part broke the connection. I stood, and my leg throbbed where I’d dropped a little too quickly to the ground, earlier. Flight was easier and faster. I was halfway to Tattletale when I sensed Rachel moving. Clawing at the dirt with her fingers, cramming it into Bastard’s mouth, almost climbing into his mouth as she shoved dirt down his throat. I sensed him react, choking, making noises far too feeble for such a great beast. Rachel had to heave herself free to avoid being in the way as he reflexively slammed his jaws shut, coughing and hacking. She grabbed handfuls of the dirt and smeared it on the stumps of his wounds, instead. Glaistig Uaine deemed it her moment to descend. I moved bugs to her so I’d know what was going on as I landed, gently, near the ones who’d been on the hill. Kid Win held Vista, and Tattletale had landed on her back near the portal’s base. Crane and her cronies stood by, impassive. “My guns didn’t do anything,” Kid Win said. “You okay?” I asked Tattletale. “Mostly. Soil was soft as I landed, but… still a drop,” she said. “You’re fine,” Crane said. Her tone made it sound like something that would be true if she said it with enough conviction. “That vision…” Tattletale said. “Anything useful?” I asked. “If it was useful, he would have censored it,” she said. I looked at Crane. “Did you plan that? Why bring that guy?” “Teacher asked me to bring him,” she said. “That is not one of mine.” So many plays. So many big players. I felt a welling anger, frustration, a note of hopelessness I hadn’t felt before. Glaistig Uaine had Gavel as a spirit, and was pounding at Scion, with little effect. “He adapts,” Tattletale said. “I was saying it on the phone. He just needs a reminder about which passenger we’ve got, and then he adjusts some internal frequency, and he adapts. Anything we can throw at him, he knows how to cancel out.” Glaistig Uaine changed up. Three spirits. Eidolon was one of them. “So we need to beat him with one shot,” I said. “Not doable,” she said. “Because we aren’t hurting him,” I spoke my thoughts aloud. We haven’t touched him. “We’re hurting him,” she said. “Kind of like how people hurt Gavel. He’s… he’s got a defense, not making him invincible, but making him a living portal. So you hurt him, and faster than you can do anything, he just swaps out the damaged material for material from… this bottomless well.” A well? I could see Lung finding his feet. As large as Leviathan, four wings, four hands, two digitigrade feet. King of Cup’s power had faded, but regeneration had made up for it. Lung was intact, naked, massive, monstrous and bristling with layers upon layers of silver scales. He joined the fray, supporting Glaistig Uaine as she took to the air, flying through the crowd to access the wounded and dying. I could see Eidolon’s shadow briefly take hold of the injured, then toss them aside. Glaistig Uaine, for her part, accessed the dead. The other two spirits attacked Scion. Here and there, attacks made him react. But, as Tattletale had said, no attack was as effective on subsequent iterations. “We could change it up,” Tattletale said. “hit him with enough effects in a way he can’t predict.” “So why don’t we?” I asked. “Just look,” Tattletale said. Two hundred capes, still recovering. Some, I suspected, playing dead, morale crushed. They’d seen Scion’s true body. They’d seen what I’d suspected, that we were truly dwarfed in scale. Their morale was crushed. The ones who still fought were the monsters, the lunatics. King of Cup’s power began to recur, massive arms from ten different species, some not from Earth, lunged out of the ground, holding Scion. Glaistig Uaine. She had Queen of Swords too, was drawing diagrams between capes on the ground and Eidolon, a narrow, tall image of glowing lines, like a steeple. The Faerie Queen looked at the Simurgh, and her spirits turned their heads at the same time. Watching, wanting some kind of action or follow-through. Expectant. The Simurgh held one gun. A single weapon she’d salvaged and sheltered with her body and wings in the instants before Scion had attacked her. “Silver bullet?” Tattletale asked. “It’s an air gun,” Kid Win said. “Useless.” “Maybe there’s another use for it,” Tattletale said. “The Simurgh’s smart.” The Simurgh fired the gun. Scion’s hair blew in the resulting gust of wind. He blasted the Simurgh, sending her into the bay. While Scion’s back was turned, Lung struck. Brute force coupled with more brute force. Strength, size, and flames that melted the sand on contact. Scion was plunged into the molten morass, was subsequently doused in water that steamed in the heat of Lung’s flame. More like plasma than flame, something else entirely. Heat, distilled. The result was more like Sundancer’s power than anything. Golden light seared Lung’s claws, but regeneration and a raw durability that exceeded all reasonable limits gave him the ability to hold on, to keep Scion beneath the growing pool of molten sand. The light intensified, and Lung’s flames swelled at the same time, as if reactive. The Endbringer-esque Lung fell, as if he had been pulled down, and Scion rose from beneath. Capes who had recovered opened fire. Glaistig Uaine used Queen of Sword’s abilities, created more bindings with the King of Cups. Crane the Harmonious, as if she’d been waiting for a moment, used her own power. A sphere, like Sundancer’s, only it was a distortion, like a glass bead that made things look upside down when you looked through it. It moved forward until it was between the defending capes and Scion. Once the bead was in place, every bullet hit. Every power. Scion hit the ground, and Lung was on him in an instant, like a cat on a mouse. It took Scion seconds to fight his way free, to strike Lung aside. The bead moved, and more shots struck their target. I watched, very still, as the guns that had been torn to smithereens were reassembled. The Simurgh was prone, but she used her telekinesis, reaching a distance away. Scion’s beam lanced through Crane. Too fast to dodge. It passed within ten feet of me, hit Kid Win, hit the portal. I could hear a structure collapsing on the far end of the portal. Crane dropped like a puppet with the strings cut. Something in Kid Win’s suit detonated, and he tipped over, landing hard. Vista rushed to his side, her expression hard. No anguish, no tears, none of the emotion I’d have expected her to show. It was almost scary. Bastard, in the distance, rose to his feet. He’d swelled in size. Was still growing. Rachel remained where she’d been, kneeling in a pile of his blood, as he tore forwards. Crashed into Lung, making a sound more like an extended grunt than a growl or a roar. Lung practically picked up the dog, throwing it at Scion. It wasn’t additive growth. I could see how the dog swelled. Lab Rat’s power had to tap into something to create the flesh. Had used my blood and bone. Except it was tapping into the same things that Rachel’s power provided. Mass. It was like a limiter had been removed altogether. The can of worms cracked open. Muscle, rippling. Claw. Horn and bone. Calcified flesh. Like water from a waterfall, tendrils and body parts raining down from the lump that clung, snarling from many different mouths, to Scion. All one connected mass, incoherent. Scion began burning through the flesh, making headway against the growing monstrosity. Glaistig Uaine shot him with Queen of Sword’s ability yet again. They were driving him away from the settlement, and that allowed some capes to use powers they’d been unable to. Miss Militia stepped up to the plate, a cape flanking her. Her power, to create the bomb. Ten and a half feet long. Without even being asked, the Simurgh caught it with her telekinesis and flung it. Scion dodged, and the Simurgh moved the bomb to ensure it hit the target. The cape beside her used his power to contain the damage, to direct it outward, skyward, to shield us from sound, light and shockwave. The clouds had been struck from the sky. What remained of Bastard, cut free where the flesh dangled below the erected barrier, fell into the water. It continued to spread over the Bay’s surface and creep towards the beach. That effect would end before it became a problem, I suspected. Yet Scion appeared untouched. He was cleaner, even. Scoured of the blood and dirt. Pristine. “A bottomless well,” I said. “Bottomless enough to matter,” Tattletale said. “We take out pounds of flesh, but it’s really only removing a drop from the bucket at a time. Then the ‘water’ flows out, high pressure, filling the gaps.” “And morale plunges,” I said, staring out at the capes who were hanging back, staring at the scene rather than participating. “Psychological,” Tattletale said. “Just like Endbringers. He crafted that body for a reason.” “We understand him more with every passing moment,” she said. “It doesn’t help. Just the opposite, really.” I couldn’t bring myself to answer. I heard voices behind us, the noise of thrumming engines. Reinforcements had arrived. Chevalier, members of the Protectorate, Leviathan. And at that same moment, Scion was gone. I’d grasped, some time ago, that flight added a whole new dimension of possibilities to battle. Scion brought a fourth dimension, capable of stepping out of the fight any time he wanted. “Running?” I said. “No. Moving on to the next target. He’s going to do a rotation,” Tattletale said. “Hit each area in turn, then go.” I nodded slowly. “Going to do better next time.” “You didn’t do anything this time,” Tattletale said. She was right. I was… what, supposed to coordinate powers? Pull something? I’d been on my heels the entire time. Not scared… Well, yes, scared. But more in awe, out of my depth, remembering the last fight and seeing this fight, knowing how small I was… This wasn’t a fight that would be won with some gimmicks. It wasn’t a fight that would be won with a lot of gimmicks. I could see it in the trigger-event vision I’d glimpsed, in the way things were playing out, the costs, the lack of any concrete gains… “I‘m not going to be on the battlefield the next time.” Shit. I think I was a few seconds late in hitting the submit button. I’m hoping a bunch of readers didn’t get the incomplete (autosaved) version of the update by email. That’d suck. If you don’t have the finished version here, refresh. It should appear. Battling a bad cough and headaches, was a little slow to the punch in the final minutes. Didn’t get a great chance to proofread, so my apologies for any typos. Am fixing them as I reread now. The complete one ends “I’m not going to be on the battlefield.”, right? (If someone subscribed by email could confirm that’s the version that went through, that’d be great). Tagg on September 21, 2013 at 00:18 said: Confirmed. WyldCard4 on September 21, 2013 at 00:18 said: But more in awe, out of my depth, remembering the last fight and seeing this fight, knowing how small I was… “I’m not going to be on the battlefield the next time.” That was the last several lines from the email, to make sure the thing worked as intended. Hopefully. Thanks. That’s a relief. Cookie to Wyldcard. Then that makes this 284 chapters released, barring fuckups on WordPress’ end, on time. Neat, I get a cookie! Can it be used to save or kill a minor character I like/hate? Being serious, this is an incredible accomplishment. One that very few writers I know have even come close to. Thank you very much for Worm. That’s amazing. When you hit 300, you should win a prize. Like, a big prize. A schooner or a polar bear or something. This is the typo thread. Please put your catches for misspelled words and awkward grammar in here. Asmora on September 21, 2013 at 01:21 said: Bad italics. Naughty italics! In the section where Gavel attacks, there is a paragraph that starts with “Excaliber’s sheath” and that sentence seems to be missing some context. It’s a reference to Arthurian lore. While Arthur could get wounded, the sheath made it so he’d never bleed to the point of dying. A perfect analogy to Gavel’s power. Scion suffered a continual onslaught of powers and projectiles from every direction, and the distraction these shots seemed to give Gavel the chance he needed to find his second wind. –> the distraction of these shots as he tore forwards. Crashed into Lung, making –> combine both sentences with a comma? Probably not a typo, but a grammar error: Gavel, now clean-cut, his once-shaggy beard now cut to a style that would have been ludicrous if he didn’t have the reputation to back it up; two perfectly straight lines that met at a sharp 90-degree point at the chin. “Two perfectly straight lines that met at a sharp 90 degree point at the chin.” Thath’s a dependant clause. Semi-colons are for independant clauses. The semicolon has to be changed to a colon “:” for it to be correct. “The Dragonfly’s onboard system kept trying to calculating the remaining time for the trip” Trying to calculate Mengha on May 29, 2014 at 02:59 said: “The Suits were among the injured, and King of Cups was patching up the damage” It’s repeated several times so I’m not sure but isn’t that supposed to be King of Clubs? “King of Cup’s” Those appear a few times, and in all those cases, the apostrophe should be after the S, since they’re not named King of Cup or Queen of Sword. in the hopes that something hits. –> hope? Not certain Once the bead was in place, every bullet hit. –> this shouldn’t be all italics, maybe just the ‘every’? yinyangorwuji on September 21, 2013 at 00:17 said: Some of these people are so god damn strong. Gavel… He’s strong enough to stand up to fucking SCION! And how have the Endbringers not been beaten before? Probably because the Endbringers are smart. If Gavel showed up to an Endbringer fight he either forced a retreat, didn’t win the fight, or it was Simurgh and he couldn’t make contact. Gavel has no defense against the Simurgh’s scream, Leviathan is so fast he could avoid him and simply have the force of the waves push him away/drown him, Behemoth is BEHEMOTH, one of the twins would copy his power, and the Evil teletubby would cause him to age into dust. Ben Friesen on September 23, 2013 at 14:20 said: Though from what I recall, Gavel was one of the guys who was cooped up in the Birdcage, so wouldn’t have participated in as many fights against the Endbringers. Because they are ginormous, literally tougher than planets, have superior mobility, and you don’t want to get too close to any of them. They aren’t tougher than planets. Half of the energy of the attack that nearly took out Behemoth went into the planet to negligible effect and Chevalier managed to get a hit at the core with what’s basically fifty tons of metal moving at a few dozen metres per second. The center of the Endbringers are comparable in structure to neutron stars. Chevalier did not penetrate the core. Scion is extremely powerful. Finally: Remember the nano-thorns? A needle which was for some reason Tinkered to have them could easily penetrate the core of the earth, and with a long enough bit of nanothorn razor wire you could cut Earth in half. Armsmaster’s nanothorn-enhanced halberd couldn’t cut much of Leviathan. Because Gavel is strong enough that he was able to ‘get by’ without much creativity, it seems. So we have an echidna situation, where they her “well” causes her to regenerate faster than they can damage her. I suspect Taylor is going to try something stupid again. Find out where this entity is projecting Scion as it’s avatar and try to stop him at the source. Find the source, find his dead partner, maybe the third entity, and maybe we’ll finally get some answers. So Bastard died, and I guess the Kings/Queens of the Suits are the heavy hitters. We now know what Rachel would be like if Scion didn’t put a limit on her power. She can turn a dog into a pseudo creature similar to Echinda without her limits. More sadness for Vista with the death of Kid Win, she doesn’t even appear shocked. She is the only remaining original member of the Brockton Bay Wards. I wonder how long Vista has left. Maybe she will end up the new Chevalier of her generation. Only Chevalier and Miss Militia are the survivors of their original ward team right? Besides Weld who leads the irregulars and the crazy fuck that is Shadow Stalker. It’s implied but not certain that Armsmaster was one of the Original Wards. Scion hit him and Dragon first. Do we even know if they are still alive? Though killing those two off-screen would be incredibly lame. Something I just put together today is that Mouse Protector (the hero that made up half of Murder Rat) was also probably the mouse themed girl from the original Wards. …I have no idea what Taylor’s plan is, but somehow she’s come up with one. underwhelmingforce on September 21, 2013 at 00:25 said: That or she’s given up. That’s how I read the last few lines the first time. I think she’d be on the battlefield if she’d given up. It might be a long shot plan, but in my judgment nothing but a plan would stop her from taking the fight straight to her enemy. Well they have to find the source of Scion to shut him off. That means she needs: A. A means of traveling dimensions. The only other way without the door maker is with Labyrinth/Scrub. B. A means of tracking down the source. The only way I can conceive of this is with the Fairy Queen, Tattletale, or her own status as a queen administrator of shards apparently. C. ALOT of luck. That memorary that they had all seen had provided vital clues, maybe they could get Labrinth to flip through universes and get Scrub to use his powers at the same time on the portal to access the space between universes Zion seems to be located. Nah, I think Dinah’s more necessary for this one. I forgot about her. The fact that she is with Faultline means that Taylor will meet her if her plan does indeed involve Scrub/Labyrinth. It’s about time for a reunion, and the end of the world already happened so it shouldn’t matter if they meet again. She has the same ability to see worlds as Scion. Perhaps something where the all-seeing Cauldron cape, if still alive, teams up with her and Contessa, if still alive? A contessa team up would be cool. The number one and number three precogs in the world teaming up would be very helpful. Contessa might be able to use her power to find his home dimension if she defines victory as finding it instead of beating Scion. Scion sealed the dimension where the entity resides. It won’t be that simple. BUT, and this is only conjecture, he lacks imagination with his powers. See my post below but its stated that he one of the reasons passengers bond with hosts is so he can gain all the experience of using powers to their full potential. Tattletale was the only one who thought of using Scrub/Labyrinth’s power that way and Myrrdin was also mentioned as a possible candidate. The doormaker was not in Scion’s plan, I think any dimensionally hopping ability was a big no no for being a possible threat. So he might not have thought to create a defense against it. Additional note: all Cauldron Cape powers (which includes Labyrinth, I believe) are made by Scion’s counterpart, and thus many of them didn’t get properly edited to eliminate their threat to Scion. For instance, Grey Boy. At point A: Smiurgh might be able to cobble together something. I suspect she’s going to do the same thing the Undersiders did against Siberian, ignore/distract Zion completely while searching for the real body to strike. That would be much more promising of the Undersiders had actually defeated Siberian. It was a sound tactic, it just failed due to a lack of manpower, firepower and combat experience. ShawnMorgan on September 22, 2013 at 10:27 said: I reckon she’s going to go and retrieve Foil first. Then pull an SG1 where she does something so dumb not Scion could see it coming… Is now wondering if foil could impart her power to many many bugs… many swarm clones later…. Depends how you define ‘defeated’. They drove Siberian (and Jack and Bonesaw) from Brockton Bay with hir tail between hir legs. I’d count that as a victory, even if they didn’t capture or kill hir. First confirmed Australian cape and he’s a badass. Nice. Lets face it in that place a power that stops things from killing you is almost a requirement for citizenship. I have to say that Australia must have some pretty bad cape problems for there to be an insane vigilante who causes enough problems to be sent to the birdcage. Yea, the problem is that everything in australia is trying to kill you. emiliehardie on September 22, 2013 at 03:51 said: I read this as the Australian government not having the authority/force to control their capes. Remember, it was mentioned that Canberra (the captial of Australia, btw) was attacked by Simurgh before the start of the story. Given the federal system and the autonomy of the states, the attack probably didn’t cause the country to collapse, but I’ll bet it took out a decent portion of the government and the public service. Who knows, maybe the Gavel got sent to the birdcage because none of the local organisations had the resources necessary to deal with him. nick012000 on September 22, 2013 at 08:14 said: As an Australian, the fact that he rubs the Australian national zeitgeist the wrong way probably didn’t help. We Australians are descendants of convicts, and that anti-authoritarian streak has formed a large part of Australian society, to the point where our unofficial national anthem is about a hobo who stole a sheep and then killed himself to avoid being captured by the police (seriously, look up Waltzing Matilda on Youtube), and a bank robber who died in a gunbattle with police (Ned Kelly) is a national hero. Australians don’t like it when people carry themselves as though they’re better than the rest of us, and I’d say that “Tall Poppy Syndrome” played a large part in his fall from grace, especially if he killed a well-loved super-villain. Hum, his fall from grace came because he thought that a super villain was bluffing when he threatened to blow up a stadium if Gavel didn’t stop going for his family. Lots of people died and [insert sarcasm] suddenly [/sarcasm] the public realised that he was a madman who killed innocent people because of their relation to villains. If I remember correctly Simurgh attacked in late 2010/ early 2011. It was a very recent attack before the start of this story. I got the impression that Gavel had already been in the birdcage for a few years once he was released. Whilst it is possible that he was arrested post Simurgh attack I find it difficult to believe considering the probable disarray of the Australian government. Additionally I find it easy to believe that it would have been listed as a Gavel instead of Eidolon victory if he was still free. I also think it would take a lot of time to create enough of a powerbase in the birdcage to become a cell block leader, especially if you were a crazy vigilante. jeqofire on November 18, 2013 at 13:15 said: Leviathan did hit Sydney in early 1998, according to Chevalier’s interlude. I don’t remember if any dates for Gavel’s activity were given. Still waiting for an Italian cape, wildbow! 🙂 . I’m expecting one that looks a lot like Bishop, but with a bigger and more ornate hat. The Pope lives in the Vatican and we haven’t had an Italian one in a long time. So he doesn’t count 😛 . Well this is an alternate universe so this Italy might be very different. Parts of it are very vulnerable to Leviathan/BEHEMOTH for example. Heh, I believe that in Chevalier’s list of Endbribngers attacks Naples was said to have been targeted by Leviathan. Oh and the possibility of the Pope being a cape brought me back to a VERY silly fanfiction I had in mind where the Vatican publicly condemned parahumans but had a secret blacks op made of parahuman Swiss Guards. As I said, a silly idea 🙂 . > Naples, September 16th, 2000. Leviathan. Which I did find weird when it was posted btw. Behemoth would have made more damage to a city built near the very same volcano that buried Pompeii. Guess it was one other indication they were playing softball. As for italian capes… we have Peter Petrelli, I mean, Eidolon. Does he count? 😛 Naples is one of Italy’s biggest and most important ports second only to Genoa and MAYBE Venice. I can see Leviathan attacking it. Behemoth would probably come out of the Aetna. Just so people can starts creaming that Typhon freed himself at last. Additionally Behemoth is the Cape Killer. He seems to mostly target flammable areas such as power factories and oil fields. Leviathan seems to be the endbringer who can deal real damage to structures. Hasn’t Leviathan sunk several coastal areas? paradoxius on May 25, 2014 at 00:24 said: Or what if capes in the employ of the Catholic Church end up getting sainted (since a big requirement for sainthood is having associated miracles) so you end up with a small army of parahuman “saints” in the service of the Pope. Clearly there would be seven, each based on one of the Seven Heavenly Virtues, and would have great powers with huge drawbacks. Castitas: a breaker who cannot be interacted with by a human or a weapon or tool used by a human. Temperantia: a thinker who sees all of the negative consequences of any decision they consider. Caritas: a shaker who prevents all injury within their range, instead feeling the pain of those who would be injured. Industria: a tinker who can build almost any construct out of tiny super-specialized components the size of grains of sand, each of which must be custom made. Patientia: a master/striker who dulls aggression in anyone they touch, at the cost of slightly tranquilizing themselves as well. Benevolentia: a trump who grants defensive and regenerative powers to everyone in their range but themselves. Humilitas: a stranger whose actions are attributed to someone else, and is seen as being irrelevant. Gavel was a vigilante in a land settled by criminals. Just going into the Outback gives you an estimated 30% chance of triggering, or much higher if you only count the survivors. Any supervillains there are insane or desperate. Truly, his work was cut out for him. Bighter on September 22, 2013 at 23:40 said: Yeah, Australia is such a awful place to live. That’s what the beer is for, Bighter, that’s what the beer is for. I wouldn’t go that far until I’ve lived or at least visited there…but from what I hear, it’s unpleasant and (on a societal level) difficult. I imagine we hear that about your country too. shrug Say what you will about Australia, they have no gun massacres. Unlike the USA 😦 Freak King on September 21, 2013 at 00:28 said: Could Sundancer and Dragon team up to make a Dyson Sphere? I can’t think of how. I think he means Sundancer makes an orb and Dragon makes a containment structure for the orb that soaks up its energy and converts it to a usable form. Not for fighting, but for energy generation. It’s an interesting thought, although I think there are easier ways to break thermodynamics in this universe. Oh…so not a literal Dyson sphere. Yeah, there are easier ways to break thermodynamics. One possibility that I was considering for a while was using the residue from when Bitch’s dogs return to normal as fertilizer. Or have Alexandria turn a wheel really, really fast. Or use Eidolon. Or… They are not strictly broken, the energy comes from alternate universe. Patrick Reitz (@dreamfarer) on September 21, 2013 at 00:32 said: Excellent chapter (as always). Interesting structure to the plot where knowledge is something they’ve been critically lacking and as they get it, it makes things just seem bleaker. On the other hand though, the ones who can keep going have the best chance now that they’ve ever had in that they know more about Scion and the other Worm and can finally start putting together plans that account for the real issue they’re facing. Alright, for epic tunes to battle with, I’m going with Travel Demon, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUCW-7h27u0 Though it ends more triumphant than this one. My props to the capes who kept fighting after the vision, especially some of the cooperation that happened. The cooperation helps. Fight like lunatics. It sounds like the best option at this point. What, you want to fight like a sane, easy to pick off person? At least they finally picked up on Scion’s goal, too. That whole “path to victory” shit where he was manipulating the battle in order to manipulate morale. That means it’s better for him if fewer capes coordinate and fight against him. Which means that it’s better for the humans to coordinate and fight. Also, Simurgh didn’t do much, but at least she used her scream mindfuckery to wake people up from the mindfuckery of Scion. Those brains are only big enough to be fucked by one creature made of nonliving material replenishing it from a bottomless well and basing their form on mythology. As for the Smurf, her path to victory is always to “not do much” and reap rewards down the road. The one gun she clutched to her chest and saved was obviously the one with the glass cylinder inside it. The gun was apparently an air gun, and she deliberately shot him with a blast of air that seemed to do nothing. The attacks that seem to do nothing are the ones you really have to worry about from Simurgh. The contents of the glass cylinder must have been visually indistinguishable from air. A virus? A poison? Nanites? There’s no telling, but I’m sure it’ll do something to the Golden Fool. That may qualify as her own personal Crowning Moment of Awesome. The Simurgh faced down Scion with nothing but an air gun. It’s a trap! By forcing Scion to contemplate what the attack really did (it’s the Simurgh, it had to do something), she tricks him into an endless loop of attempting to discern something that does not exist. Or she’s a massive troll and thought it’d be funny to shoot a pop gun at Scion, ‘cuz you know.. pop guns are about our speed against him. illlogicmedia on September 23, 2013 at 10:32 said: That is an interresting read in thre Alathon. Shooting “nothing” at Scion so that he has to continually loop possible victories agaisnt nothing could bypass his “I WIN” power. I cannot predict whatever you’re going to do. There is nothing in any hypothesis space I can imagine. I like it. I hope I haven’t misinterpreted this: the only clue I can really think about is that every power is a test, every shard began an infant and the reason they were given out was for them to mature in combat against each other. I guess that implies that whatever Scion is holding onto is less developed in comparison to some of the Cape passengers/agents. The problem is he’s holding onto several of the most overpowered stuff. Noelle’s smell description, GU’s given title and Scion’s POV on Taylor are hints but I don’t know what for. Hhhhnnnnnggh. Don’t forget the combination of Lab Rat and Bitch circumventing Bitch’s shard’s restrictions. Just like how Scrub and Labyrinth got around restrictions on her power. It’s all related to the fact that Scion can handle any one cape’s power easily, no matter how strong. They need to team up and break the shards of their natural restrictions. Also, in my research I’ve come across a case where another nigh-invulnerable being who was extinguishing humanity was defeated by woodpeckers. Might as well. What’s the worst that could happen, Scion blasts your ‘pecker? taliesinskye on September 21, 2013 at 14:09 said: …OK, how’d the woodpecker one work? That’s Captain Planet for you, at least as portrayed by Don Cheadle. Blasting Scion with the power of heart? It’s also stated that Scion lacks imagination with his powers. He sends them out to see what the passengers hosts can do with it and then takes that experience for himself at the end of the cycle. Since most people will think outside the box and put their powers to use in unusual ways similar to Taylor did. I think the only times he has been inconvenienced was when someone did something with a power he didn’t predict similar to the G driver which is just Technology and Scion doesn’t seem to care about using Tinker abilities, Eidolon whose creation was a product of Cauldron and thus not part of the plan, and just the fact that the Fairy queen had so many powerful powers that were probably not intended to all belong to a single person for it’s danger. I thought Noelle’s scent thing was referring to Taylor’s passenger’s maturity, GU’s title was referring to its original role, and… Not quite sure what you’re referring to when you cite “Scion’s POV on Taylor.” Regardless, I thought they were referring to separate, yet related things that have already been elucidated. I believed all three were comments on Taylor’s passenger’s growth. Noelle, yeah that, GU has more respect for Taylor than others and Scion directly commented on the maturity of her shard. Oh yeah, I do remember the relevant Scion line. Something about “her shard had already split off” or something like that? The Yangban would’ve been so useful to have if they weren’t so fucking selfish. The Yangban has problems far beyond being selfish. I thought their problem was that they were being brainwashed into being selfless? Their problem was that they were being brainwashed into being selfless – to the Yangban/to China. Everyone else can soar into the sun on a flying f*k. There’s nothing selfless in the Yangban; it’s a collection of people who have been brainwashed and beaten into the semblance of a military unit, used by the Chinese government to kill their enemies and secure territory. Now that their xenophobia bit them in the ass (refused portal access) they’re murdering the people who tried to plan ahead to take their territory. This is pretty much in accordance with how China rolls in our world, we shouldn’t be surprised. Selfless in the sense of no individuality, not selfless as altruistic. Which reminds me. I looked up the meaning of Yangban a while back. It means either “Prototype,” “Model,” “Templet,” or “Sample Plate”. Three out of four of those imply that the Yangban are merely precursors to something greater. So, are the Yangban a prototype or a sample plate? For a second there I thought Taylor was getting a second trigger event. I like the idea of Taylor realizing her limits, knowing she can’t actually doing anything against Scion on the battlefield and instead of being trapped in the ‘I gotta be on the front lines’ mindset is going to gtfo and do something else. It’d be cool if she found Cauldron’s HQ and we finally learned how Cauldron does what it does. I think Wildbow said awhile back there’d be no more second triggers in the story. For prominent characters. Well, Greg, it’s your time to shine. Can Cauldron Capes have 2nd triggers? I am fairly confident that Grey, if he survived, would have have jumped at the chance to drink one of the free formula’s offered based on his personality. I don’t see why they can’t. It’s mentioned in Scion’s interlude that they still collect information so they can still become matured enough to split off. It’d be pretty rad to see Greg come out nowhere again, doing something completely unexpected. I thought that Eidolon being the “High Priest of the stillborn faerie” meant that the Thinker entity was D-E-D dead when the story began. Also, if the shards could mature and split off, why hasn’t Keith (Legend’s adopted son) become a cape yet? God knows his dad’s logged enough combat hours for him to qualify. To answer the second question, because Keith hasn’t had a trigger event or a Cauldron formula or anything like that. If Legend’s shard could mature, then Keith would have had a trigger by now. Remember Glory Girl’s trigger (during a basketball foul), and Aidan’s trigger (woke up after sleepwalking). Re: the Keith question, timing matters a lot. As I understand it, anyone who’s around when Legend’s shard becomes full enough to bud off could receive it. Aidan got Taylor’s shard, not Danny. Legend is presumably away from home a lot. His powers are likelier to spread to someone he works with – a PRT officer or a secretary or something – than to Keith. Arrgh, more answers that raise more questions. Who counts as prominent? I guess all the Undersiders are out but possibly anyone else i fair game. It’s still not clear why some capes have 2nd triggers and others do no. I think it has something to do with the mechanic that allows a shard to split itself once it has enough knowledge. That or it happens when a shard decides that it failed to give a person the right/enough power to allow for adequate conflict and readjusts to correct the failure. My theory of how second triggers work is that at the moment where the shard is ready to splinter, if there are no non-capes around, it bonds the newly splintered shard with the host. When Grue had his 2nd trigger, there were only capes around IIRC. That is pretty much what I thought too. So to have a 2nd trigger you need to: 1. Have a “mature” passenger that after a lot of stress/conflict is about to split off/reproduce. 2. Have a extremely traumatic event similar to your trigger event. 3. This event can only happen if there are no non-parahumans around for the passenger to split off into. 4. Then the shard stays/joins with the original greatly enhancing your powers. And hasn’t had one already. The TA explained that it is possible that many parahumans could have had a 2nd trigger immediately after the first without realizing it. If Taylor hadn’t had a 2nd trigger in her locker at the start, it might be too late to have another since Aiden was created. If Echidna had happened several weeks later, she might have had a 2nd trigger. Though I suppose it is also possible that a passenger can reproduce multiple times with enough stress/conflict. Both Shielder and Laserdream got second-generation powers from Lady Photon. It may be that a second trigger requires inheriting a power from a different* cape. It’s not your own power doubling up, it’s a second one joining the mix. We know Taylor’s shard had already replicated. We have no reason to believe it only happened once. Grue went from merely damping power, to collecting and controlling it. Possible sources- we can dismiss Bonesaw or Imp. But Taylor and Siberian’s powers… either one, modified and re-expressed to partially replicate or control another’s powers, could explain his new ability. That idea makes sense. We just need to look for all the second trigger events and compare them. Which means…um…well, there’s Grue’s…. Then I guess King of Cups did have a second trigger there after all, orchestrated solely to send a message to the other capes, just in a different way than most people mean. MarcusFell on September 21, 2013 at 12:57 said: I’ve always wondered something. Did Taylor trigger twice in a row in the locker or not? It makes sense to think that the trauma of the locker gave her the ability to sense bugs, and then the sensory overload enabled her to command them. I’ve heard that theory, but it never really clicked. It also doesn’t fit with any theory of what second trigger events are. Yeah i remembered that so when we started seeing the entities I thought wildbow had trolled us again. Instead it was just one of Teacher’s thralls doing…something. Forgive e, o mighty wild bow! (second triggers relevant to the plot.) There was a second trigger, they just died right after. Charles on September 21, 2013 at 01:53 said: Even that could change, but I wouldn’t put long odds on their life expectancy afterwards… Theory: Zion is falling prey to the Power Gamer’s Curse, and he hasn’t even realized it yet. He built himself the ultimate character, covered all the flaws with over-compensating merits, and has forgotten that at best he’s the GM in this setting but inserted himself as his own character. He thinks he can see everything and has everything covered, but if that were true, he would have been done with his ‘cleansing’ experiment a bit back. Siberian ^n? You know, I think I “like” this Scion more. Standing there, no selling everything they throw at him, burning handpicked capes with his golden light or pushing their heads through the ground, makes him more scary than when he was destroying landmasses and simply blasting away armies of capes. The Sandman on September 21, 2013 at 07:23 said: The problem with that analogy is that if your GM is that much of a douche it’s a lot easier to leave the game, punch him, or both. Yeah, if your GM is that much a munchikin you either got to have a good sense of humor, and troll the hell out of him, or not let him DM anymore. Once he starts killing your characters just to show he can, it’s definitly time to do something. There’s precedent. When it comes to fighting Scion, they just use the same rules Vampire: The Masquerade uses for fighting Caine. My GM sits on MY couch, drinking MY beer. Thats the power I have over him. Not so much for Scion. Well, you know what the best solution to a GM’s god-NPC? A creative party. And who do we know that’s good at coming up with brilliantly stupid* plans? Or is it stupidly brilliant? I suppose it depends on if the plan falls more on the “David Xanatos” or “Mr. Welch” end of the scale. The first part of this chapter felt strange to me. It sounded…remote? As if it wasn’t taylor narrating anymore. It may have to do with the whole “Earth is insignificant in the great scheme of things” spiel, which sort of clashes with our knowledge that all possible Earths are more numerous than the atoms of the universe and that Scion is going to destroy them all. However, I think it picks up once Queen of Swords and King of Cups (and their powers) are introduced. Speaking of which it’s always nice to see new powers and I’m amazed how even this late in your story you can still come up with inventive abilities. For example I had surmised that Gavel was a Brute (with him walking away from a bomb) but I was thinking something like standard invulnerability, not “can only take tot amount of damage”. THe vision was weird. One of Teacher’s students shared Scion’s memories with everyone? But wouldn’t that require telepathy, which only Simurgh possesses? And I thought Teacher could only give “minor” Thinker’s abilities? And I think that Taylor is plotting an attack on Scion’s real body. It seems likely that Scion selected a shard who was near to splitting (Cups), then proceeded to psychologically torture the shardbearer to induce a second trigger event. Teacher’s cape let everyone remember what happened. Ok. THAT makes way more sense. Good thing there are people smarter than me in this comments section. There may be more Earths than atoms in the universe, but there are also more Jupiters, Marses, Suns, Alpha Centauri B’s, 55 Cancri B’s, Andromeda galaxies, etc, than there are atoms in the universe. It’s not special if it’s true of everything. And the inventiveness of superpowers is neat, but something about it has bugged me. Part of it’s probably how wildbow “used up” stock super powers in the early bits of the story and doesn’t want to reuse them. Aegis and Glory Girl were minor modifications on the Alexandria Package, and we haven’t really seen any since. Velocity is really the only pure speedster we’ve seen, while Kid Win and Armsmaster are easily the most generic tinkers whose names don’t start with a D. We haven’t seen a lot of flying artillery lately, either, nor any folks except Lung, Fenja, and Menja who can make themselves really big. These basic, and in a few cases common-enough-to-be-named-in-universe, powers or power sets haven’t been seen much since Brockton Bay. Where are all the Alexandria-packaged capes that should exist, since they have their own name? The speedsters, the flying artillery? The neater, more original capes are great, but why have we not seen evidence of these commoner types being…common? The inventiveness of the superpowers is one of Worm’s best traits. I never said it wasn’t, but when the Alexandria Package is supposed to be common and yet a third of the capes we see with it are Alexandria herself… So the pre-Scion Entity used Tattletale’s shard to try and determine all kinds of possible attacks, even those future-sight couldn’t predict, then implement blocks. And I think Simurgh’s been borrowing Tattletale’s shard to work around blocks in her omniscience. … and borrowing Imp’s power to keep me from noticing it! She was standing right over Lisa when the comments or the narrative (I hate it when I lose track of which “facts” come from where) were talking about how she borrows tinker AND THINKER powers, and it never crossed my mind that pericognition would be obscenely useful to someone who can see everything around the present. She has ALL the surrounding data, and Lisa’s power should be able to perfectly fill in that blank, as well as many of the precog blind spots. Huh, didn’t realize it was Tattletale’s shard he was using but it makes sense, especially since Taylor describes it as a familiar presence. Guess that means Tattletale got front row seat to Scion using her power to make sure humanity was thoroughly fucked. pallandrome on September 21, 2013 at 02:04 said: anyone else here think that Taylor is off to find the well and poison the damned thing? Yup. The only question to ask, now, is, HOW? When you consider the title of the arc is VENOM… How is a good question. Will she be aiming at the real body? Or poisoning Scions desire to continue? Just to point out, “venom” is specifically injected poison. It doesn’t do anything if you drink it. Yeah, I also took note of what this arc’s title is (vis-a-vis poisoning the well). Well, time to go back to Shadow Stalker’s “run the fuck away” plan I guess. Scion ain’t going anywhere unless Simurgh can get her hands on some really good tech. I’m almost happy that Taylor seems to be calling it quits, because watching her grind herself into the ground fighting this freak would be heartrenching. Wonder what she’s going to do now. Go on an adventure to find a way to cut Scion off from the multiverse, or just find somewhere where she can gather a bunch of people who aren’t assholes and put her feet up until Golden Man get’s bored. The bet the Smurf feels pretty dumb being knocked around like that, thought not as dumb as Chevalier feels showing up when everything’s wrapping up. Each chapter is a surprise but I’m not thinking Taylor is calling it quits here. Just realizing that trying to go head to head with Scion is not the play she needs to be making. True. I’ve just been eagerly waiting for Taylor to tell everyone to go fuck themselves for a while now, I think she’s earned the right. TheShadowbehindyou on September 21, 2013 at 05:34 said: They truly have to hit the Entitys real body. Scoin is just a projection, an image created to study and intimidate humanity. What about all the other big players? Isn’t there a cape with reality-shifting powers out there anymore? And Doctor Mother didn’t die yet, so they could use couldrons information and tech to access the Entity. I really liked the interaction between the cape’s powers, and all the possibilitys they create. Btw.: What does Tecton see when Vista uses her power? Thanks for this great chapter Wildbow! Tecton’s a tinker primarily, he’s not blessed with geology-sense vision. He probably sees what everyone else sees. He does have a minor thinker power of seeing structural balance, which Vista’s power has probably abundantly fucked up. I thought he needed to concentrate on a specific structure in order to make that work. Unless there’s textual evidence saying it’s on all the time? Yeah,I think it’s on only when he wants to. Still, using it after Vista has warped space from horizon to horizon must be weird. I’d imagine Tecton sees a dartboard with Vista’s face on it. Headaches are annoying, and if you can get them from the spatial warping of 3D glasses… Of course, I’d imagine that this happens with most senses. Okay so it looks like Scion killed Bastard. Now he’s got to be going down. The Smurf did something. I just don’t know what. The question was, did she do it to Scion, or to the capes fighting him? No, Bastard lived – he was chopped up by the bomb but fell in the water and kept growing, so he wasn’t dead. However getting him out of the mass of flesh that grew around him is going to be one hell of a mess, from the descriptions, it sounds like his flesh mass was on par with a large building and growing. It might not degrade like Taylor’s mass did either, considering that the mass came from Rachael’s power, not from the actual body of Bastard. Potentially a bay-sized corpse with a wolf in the middle of it. If Bastard doesn’t suffer any adverse physical or mental effects from this, I’d be willing to bet that Rachael will try very hard to collect a few more of those lab rat injectors. On the other hand, the extra mass given to Bitch’s dogs also sort of breaks down…so it’s disintegrating no matter what. Aye but it seemed as if the redistributed mass from Taylor’s transformation was re-integrated into her body? That wouldn’t be possible for Bastard, or it would hopefully not be the case anyhow. If it IS the case, we either get monsterwolf, or we get a wolf with a body density that’s in Endbringer ranges. The mechanism for breakdown at the end of the Lab Rat chemical’s effect is a bit unclear (to me anyhow) I seem to recall that Taylor mentioned that it just broke down, so she had less muscle and bone mass than she did before. I remember the changes breaking down, I don’t remember if that was because things were reverting back to their previous state, or if everything was just falling apart. I remember her noting that she was weaker than before, due to the loss of muscle and bone, so a fair amount was not resorbed. Well, we have seen the Smurf’s super weapon. She has also been exposed to Foil. Well. Almost as if everyone there had a second trigger. With a new vision. Taylor opts out. Meh, he took her. But with Cauldron down, can the Fairie Queen talk freely? After a re-read, this is how I understand the vision. Scion picks a cape (King of Cups) and finds someone he’s particularly attached to (Queen of Swords). He then proceeds to kill Swords in a slow and excruciating way so that Cups freaks out and has a second trigger event. Then, as always with trigger events, all the nearby capes get the usual vision of the entities spiraling in the void or whatever. This time, however, Teacher’s minion makes sure the memory of the vision remains, presumably to glean some information or weaknesses on Scion. What I don’t understand is why Scion went all this way to cause a second trigger. I would say it’s so people see what he truly is and come to the realisation, like Taylor, that they really are just specks compared to him. But usually the vision would be forgotten, unless…he does have Contessa’s power. It may have told him that Teacher’s memory-preserving cape would be present and people would remember their glimpse of the true Scion. Hmmm. I think this chapter made it explicit that Scion does has the “Path to Victory” power that Countessa has. On the other hand last chapter made it clear that nothing’s perfect and even someone who’s apparently infallible can still make mistakes (re: Countessa getting taken out by the Irregulars). The main difference between Contessa and Scion being that one is a baseline human and the other is the Humanoid Avatar of an Eldritch Abomination that could probably make the Irregulars combust with a glance. This update was extremely trippy. You should do drugs more because once in a while it’s really nice to have a pseudomystical update. It also almost-answered some stuff, which is an added bonus. It is now clear that Taylor has unconscious long range precognition, otherwise she would have joined the BB wards. Current status of the BB wards (roster from Taylor’s trigger to present) — Guys that got the hell out of the wards in time: – Fechette: alive and with girlfriend – Weld: alive and with girlfriend, however he’s in a weird dimension, surrounded by angry monsters – Shadow Stalker: alive after body-hijacking and years in the slammer, no girlfriend that we know of, might have had one in prison. — Guys that remained in the wards: – Vista: alive – everyone else: DED The Simurgh points a weapon at Scion! It’s a… an hairdrier? Scion: NOOOOOOOOO, my hairdo! Scion retreats to fix his ‘do I wonder about Kid Win being dead, mostly because I don’t remember what his suit looked like and what the chances are that he was operating it by tele-presence (ala Dragon). Decent odds I’m guessing wrong there, but Vista’s reaction might be a clue to that (or it might be a sign of how much she’s been effected by what she’s been through). Probably the latter, especially since she had the most seniority on the team before the story started. That’s a lot of time to get jaded. As I recall, Vista was pretty badly jaded and fatalistic as far back as the Wards arc. Given everything she’s been through since… Yeah. No drugs, just a cold. And this contradicts his point how? 😛 Even better, when you’re feverish your brain supplies all kind of weird stuff by himself ^_^ A lot that is accused of being written on drugs isn’t. I have yet to determine if this says more about the writer or the reader. I vote reader. Reminds me of my literature lessons back in school. What does the artist mean with this? He was drunk when he wrote this! – lol Teacher saves the world – lol Simurgh air-gun did something. Maybe multiversal tracer so the capes can follow it to Scion’s world-body – the rational actors all gave up. What’s that Hemingway quote about all progress being owed to unreasonable people? – Lung is blowing his 2-year wad and it seems to helping – ok, Taylor, time for one of your patented Crazy Plans(TM) I wonder how long Lung will keep going. I suppose it depends in large part on if Scion returns before Lung goes back to normal. If he did, and didn’t leave, how long do you think it would take before the Square/Cube Law or lack of oxygen did Lung in for Scion? Well, considering the strength and speed Lung displayed in this chapter, his mass isn’t slowing him down. As for oxygen issues, with the temperatures he’s generating while transformed, I don’t think he’s even using oxygen for energy transport any longer, he’s probably using some sort of plasma reaction or possibly fusion. Or he’s just pulling energy and mass out of another dimension like Rachael pulls mass out from somewhere to grow her dogs. Urk. Does this mean someone has to fight Lung until Scion gets back? Shame Gavel bit it… What about teachers ability to lock out a dimension? Maybe he could lock in Scion/ break the connection to his source. (But the way these things go the cape that can lock a dimension has to stay in the dimension, or teacher never had the ability to lock dimensions but made everyone believe that he could) mmh if I were Taylor I would start doing several things -start cloning Flechette -get Ballistic & Sundancer (I swear ballistic suns, pew pew, ok it wouldn’t help much against Scion, but I wanted to see that soo much in the Echidna arc) or just Ballistic & Flechette -get Panacea & Bonesaw to mix up something that allows Taylor to directly interface with humans (a brain parasite, or just a chameleon like semi transparent bug sitting inside an eyeball ) -get every Tinker to hug the Simurgh -let Teacher do his thing on Tattletale (& Taylor?) -can Miss Milita copy the G-Driver (and is String Theory still alive) ? Stephen R. Marsh on September 21, 2013 at 15:52 said: Smurf with a Foil-like G-Driver (about the Z-Driver stage) … But it is obvious that absent a great deal more, you are not going to actually hit Scion with anything Foil’s power has altered. If Cauldron is mining the dead entity’s shards, and if the entities are on the same reality. then they have an access to Scion’s real body. And it is not larger than an Earth since it can be sealed away on one level of reality, on one earth. Wish I remembered how much anti-matter is required to get 90% plasma state of an earth mass. I don’t think that having dead shards will give Cauldron capes access to Scion’s real body any more than triggered capes having live shards would. Less, if anything, because the triggered capes have bits of Scion in them. How do they get the shards if not from the dead worm? And what does that have to do with reaching the “real” location of the live one? Because both worms are together. Let me rephrase that. Why would having the shards of a dead Worm help with reaching the location of the live one? Especially since the live one’s own shards do not give that? @greatwyrmgold The reason people are speculating that the dead Worm’s shards should do the trick where Scions won’t is because Scion deliberately crippled his shards so they couldn’t be used against him. He specifically crippled any dimensional powers so they couldn’t reach the dimension his ‘body’ is (mostly) in. The dead Wyrm presumably didn’t have a chance to cripple it’s shards before it died so they hopefully don’t have those limitations. @OP: I’d imagine that shutting Scion off from his source would do about as much as ripping out one of Crawler’s teeth or Lung’s scales. Ballistic can’t get close enough to the suns to launch it. Besides, why would you want to? I can’t imagine that Riley or Panacea would want to make something like that… Getting as many Tinkers to Smiurgh as possible would be a good idea. Hm, maybe bring Bonesaw along. Which thing? The “give addictive and enslaving power” thing? I doubt it and I hope so. Because shooting bullets that are suns is cool! (ok it was cool till everyone could shoot energy beams). Currently Taylor uses bugs to talk, give directions and sense where other capes are, I am thinking of creating a bug that directly skips the sensorics and directly interfaces with the brain. Sure the mindcontrol/Regent bug is also possible but no need to go that far. Teacher can shift power & control, right? so maybe he can supercharge Tattletale, also doesn’t he have some kinda “groupthink” going (can’t quite remember). What would interfacing with the brain do, then? He could, but I don’t think that the base abilities he gives are really comparable to Tattletale’s, and there is probably a bit of a diminishing returns thing with Thinkering.. Like you know how bent your arm is you could know where everyone else is relative to your body. Or the time spent talking can be skipped by communicating the intention directly. ..Think like google glass without voice commands ^^. Ah, I see…keeping track of everyone. We saw what the Smurf did to Leviathan. Do they really want the kind of help they are likely to get if she gets access to Bonesaw’s power? If so, why not just cut out the middleman and have Bonesaw work on people directly? At this point, it’s less “what they want” as it is “what would be cool”. Besides, Smiurgh can work on a bunch of bugs at once, more precisely, and incorporating other tinkers’ work at the same time. Scion has looked to the future and found the path to victory. Yet the characters know that everything hasn’t gone right for him (specifically the death of his partner). This indicates he has some blind spots, most like relating to entities like himself. The second entity disintegrated and dropped probably un-vetted shards and chunks of shards. There’s also the third entity. I’m not sure how much of this the characters know, but through tattletale and the visions they probably have a decent idea. Therefore they should try to find shards from the second entity, or even the third (possible endbringer candidates). Those would be the only ones possibly capable of occluding his future sight. Scion has also intentionally chosen to try to engage with the mental processes of his human construct body, so he can display emotion. He’s managed that to some degree and has become a monster. Will that same connection to humanity cause him to become careless, or overconfident? Will he start taking risks for an even greater emotional rush? Are we looking at Scion eventually connecting enough with his human side that he then becomes defeatable? Poor multiverse. So much Scion to squash, so little time before the beams of doom lance out. Again, that reference. “all paths he had considered led to a fulfillment of his mission, his eventual meeting with his partner,” — except, of course, she is dead now, which means there are holes in his vision. “Glaistig Uaine deemed it her moment to descend” — and working with the Smurf. Still can not predict where things are going. And that air gun. I’ve got to know, not to mention, wondering about Dr. Mother and the rest. Yeah, the mugger entity is still a complete mystery. Worth a repeat for everyone who puts Scion with a path to victory power: Not to mention, when he used it with Eidelon he was concerned about how much energy he was consuming — and he needed it with Eidelon, which also got my attention. My eye was drawn to this line when I read through Scion’s psychological warfare mental attack: How much of this does Taylor remember afterwards, and is any of it relevant? I’d be willing to bet that the next thing that Taylor wants to do is go pay a visit to the Cauldron, because even if she can’t hurt Scion, she can try to figure out what happened with Cauldron. From that point forward all sorts of interesting things might happen. Taylor exploring a Cauldron HQ damaged by Case 53’s fighting each other and the Number Man and perhaps some other Cauldron capes. Bugs finding their way into parts of the facility nobody has seen except a select few. Hmm. Hrm, had an odd thought. Take a bunch of stinging insects and replace their stingers with little injectors that inject Lab Rat chemicals. Use the insects on Scion. Lab Rat chemicals, fed by Rachael’s power of mass building, was able to make bastard capable of standing up to Scion at least briefly. What would happen to Scion if his body chemistry were interfered with by Lab Rat chemicals? He also has some sort of mass transfer ability, which is so powerful that only Eidolon was able to cause enough damage to allow damage to become visible, and even then Eidolon thought he might have imagined it. How much energy might be wasted before Scion determined how to counteract the tinker chemicals created by a dead cape, administered by tinkered injectors in insects controlled by Taylor. It takes him time to sort out combined effects coming from active shards, how will he react to powers from inactive shards? And finally, will we see Foil’s power used in conjunction with Glaistig-controlled Crane? After seeing what Crane was capable of doing, I was a bit upset that she wasn’t around when Foil and Cuff attacked him. Willing to bet that Simurgh’s air-weapon was something designed to somehow mark or track Scion in a way that either she or one of the other Endbringers might be able to follow him. She considered it important enough to protect it from him when the rest of her weapons were destroyed. One thing we know that Simurg isn’t, is dumb. That device had a purpose – an important one. It’s possible* that Simurgh was actually attempting psychological warfare on Scion, but hitting him with something that she pretended was an important effect, but that he can’t figure out… Assuming of course that a) such hornets could be induced to attack Scion (i.e. they can be controlled by Weaver), b) such hornets would penetrate the puppet’s golden hide, and c) such interference would do anything to the entity itself. Also d) that such stinging insects could be tampered with in such a way without killing them. Eh, no, the only real question is whether or not the drugs would actually have an effect. Weaver controls the hornets, and Scion, with very few exceptions just lets capes hit him with their power. There are plenty of tinkers in the world who can make little injectors. Between Bonesaw and Panacea they could certainly modify the bugs to carry the injectors. Scion isn’t invulnerable, he just regenerates absurdly fast and will adapt to counter threats if he is exposed to them repeatedly. Since Scion has some sort of hyper-fast mass creation or regeneration, Lab Rat’s chemicals might latch onto that power and force the expenditure of a huge amount of power very rapidly. If Scion grows to the size of Rhode Island in a second or two before he can cleanse his system of the drug, that’s going to be a huge waste of power – especially if he can’t easily reduce his size again. Definitely a pie-in-the-sky longshot though, I agree. Yeah, the viability of the chemical was my main doubt regarding your plan.Personally, I don’t think the formula would work against Scion. Lab rat is one of those apparently rare biological tinkers, like Bonesaw and Blasto. Scion is not a biological creature (ok that sounds strange and wrong but you know what I mean). Lab Rat’s concoctions would fail just as Blasto’s attempt to clone the Simurgh failed. It does make sense to say he doesn’t fit our definition of biological. No blood, tissue, no organs, anything like that. No cells even. Given the time of morning it is with no sleep, I’m iffy on if Scion even counts as live. I figure the iffy parts are reproduction and waste production. Apparently some people add being made out of cells onto that list as well If he does produce waste, that’s a possible means of going after him. Still, being iffy doesn’t stop viruses, who have affected the evolution of other species. You humans are at least 8% virus, in fact. Now that I think about it, the entities are like viruses, just intelligent ones that are active outside of their hosts. Like viruses, like gods, like babies, I believe was Tattletale’s first words on the subject. But Scion IS a biological construct. That’s why he’s doing what he is doing. During his interlude, he was actually experimenting to see if he could feel emotions like humans do, and he found something when he blew up the UK, which convinced him to continue experimenting in destruction since it gave him emotional feedback, where doing good apparently never did. Now, it is definitely possible that he’s not made of biological materials, that he’s some sort of near perfect synthetic human, but it’s not required. There are plenty of very human capes in the world whose bodies are nearly invulnerable. Alexandria springs to mind. Gavel is actually described as being similar to Scion in how he mitigates damage, just much weaker. Then there are capes like Weld. Scion might be closer to Weld than Alexandria, but I don’t get that impression. I think he’s biological, just with more cape powers than one can shake a stick at, none of them with artificial limits. The fact that Legend’s lasers left little scratches indicates that the healing is not instantaneous or unconscious. I think it’s fair to say that he is more durable than any other cape, except maybe one of the tougher Endbringers, even without regenerating any. Besides, the bugs would need to get to Scion. We could probably take a Blasto-made clone of Hatchet Face, Foil, and maybe Alexandria, take relevant samples of tissue, and have Panacea and/or Bonesaw add them to some bugs (or maybe larger animals controlled by bugs), then add an injector, but by that point it’s less and less like the original plan–not to mention more and more like the premise of a bad fanfic. “What if Bonesaw, Panacea, and Cauldron collaborated to create something that would make the SCP Foundation’s Olympians envious?” Good chapter, as always. (Unrelated to the current chapter) A few weeks ago you (Wildbow) mentioned that you were trying another dog with your current one to see if they’d be compatible. How did that wind up working out? Unfortunately, the dog (hereby dubbed newdog) wasn’t very well taken care of prior to finding its way to me, which was a bad sign from the outset. The coat wasn’t well groomed, the ears were filthy inside (I’ve had two Brittanys and they’re prone to this, requiring regular cleaning). It wasn’t very responsive to any commands (only really sitting if it didn’t see something better to do). Ok for a puppy, not good for a six year old dog. If newdog hadn’t been tattooed/registered with the breed association, I would have assumed she was a mutt; the dog had a small stature (18ish pounds for a breed that’s 25-35) and very odd, watery bug eyes. Since it was registered, I’m suspicious that it had maybe been malnourished in puppyhood or that it was ill/ill as a puppy (which, in turn, would mean the owner was lying to me, a bad sign). As an aside, newdog was kind of like the Seinfeld girlfriend that looked beautiful in one kind of lighting or light direction and ‘omg wtf’ in a different one. (link to a compilation of clips from the episode in question: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFeUrC2gR30) That wasn’t a factor choicewise, but it was odd and rather peculiar. I didn’t feel a particular affection for the dog at the outset (again, nothing to do with appearance), but the idea was to give her a trial and see if my current dog took a liking to her. Part of the reason for this investigation into a second dog was that my brother came to stay earlier in the summer and he brought his dog; and it did a world of good for my current dog (A 2 year old Brittany). She was less skittish, more social with other dogs, more confident, more playful, even in the weeks after my brother left. My sixteen year old Brittany died in late 2012, so the working theory was that my current dog was just lonely on that front. If I’d fallen in love with this new dog, then my dog could’ve coped. If my dog had taken a liking to her, then I would’ve adapted. But I didn’t take to her, and my dog didn’t take to her, and newdog was six years old and far less trained than my current dog (four years her junior). Having seen newdog’s responses when the owner introduced me to her (and the immense difficulty the owner had in getting her to come after the dog had gone offleash), I had suspicions about her behavior. I had a lungeline that’s meant for horse training and used it to see if she’d run, and she bolted the first chance she got. Faster than I thought she would; like greased lightning, forcing her way between my leg and the door to get outside and dash for the horizon. Escaping when I was actively trying to block the door. I experimented, tried everything; no response to calls to come, no response to treats, no response to toys, balls or any of that. No response to a neighbor (very helpful neighbor) who opened her car door and tried to coax her inside. Maybe some of that was her wanting to find her owner, but the owner had a hell of a time getting her to come in circumstances where most dogs are inclined to listen/obey (at a park). The fact that I couldn’t was the critical issue; if I’d kept her, I would have had to be exceedingly careful every, every, every, every single time I opened the door to my place, and if she ever escaped without a lunge line attached (which would have eventually occurred), I suspect I’d probably never be able to catch her. That isn’t hyperbole; Brittanies are bred to go out and hunt birds all day, running in alternating horizontal and vertical figure eights around the hunter to find/point/flush birds; this isn’t a dog that would have gotten tired and come to me eventually. I felt shitty about it, but I gave her back to the owner so she can continue to look for other adoptive/foster owners. I love dogs, and I’d love to say I’m a hero who’ll help a lost soul, but I can’t take a dog I don’t care for, and I can’t take a dog that would be a nightmare to train/very high maintenance. She wasn’t aggressive, was housetrained and relatively well mannered, but she was borderline feral in the sense that I don’t think she’s had much attention paid to her and she didn’t seem to know how to learn to receive attention (or she was just a dog with minimal personality and her owner had treated her like ‘generic dog’ instead of tailoring her ownership to the dog as needed). It’s something that would be more effort to fix/reverse than I can afford/manage. Maybe I’m justifying it, but it would have been just as unhappy and unhealthy to keep her in the long run, as far as the stress it would have meant for me and the lack of needed attention and dedication I’d be able to give her. I don’t think you need to justify anything. Newdog’s happiness is not your responsibility. Sounds like you did the responsible and adult thing. There are relationships that can work for us and ones that can’t. Clinging to the ones that can’t are a recipe for disaster for everyone involved. I can see how giving newdog back wouldn’t feel like a happy ending to the story, but given that it’s the best chance for both her and you to be happy, I’d call it the more heroic of the two options. You know what they say, you can’t teach a newdog old tricks. This overly long (and OT) post is brought to you by Earth Gimel’s Bitch fanclub. A brittany is a pointer right? Some of them do like to… well, run around till they can run no more. I have an english setter, and the few times he had managed to jump and/or find a gap in the fences he was gone gallivanting for a couple of days. He -did- return when he had enough running around and/or he was hungry, but he just likes to run around too much. Even if he’s too old for that, he does not really get the message to stop running when his paws hurt. The only way to keep him still is to pet him, and as soon as you stop, no matter for how long you petted him, he slobbers all over you as thanks and then starts running around again. He just likes it. Some times he just would not come when called, no matter what, and I have to resort telling my other dog (a pinscher mutt) to go fetch him. (He does it, he would be good as a sheepdog had I any cattle to gather. It helps pinschers are brave, and setters scaredycats I guess 🙂 ) Mind you, I’m not saying only pointers are prone to that kind of thing, just that the few I’ve run into displaying that kind of behaviour are. tl;dr: if you do not have a big yard with a fence around it, a dog wih such an inclination is very difficult for you. (and you’re difficult for him) OOC, are you set on a hunting dog as a companion for yours or are you just taking in whatever dog needs a new home? A brave breed could help a lot with a shy dog if they take to eachother. I guess it’s a pack thing, having a brave one take point makes shy ones bolder. I wonder if you have considered a Greyhound. World’s fastest couch potato. It’s not hard to find a rescue greyhound from the races, here’s a site with a lot of good info. http://www.adopt-a-greyhound.org/index.shtml Of course if you are just a Brittany person, then ignore me 🙂 I am aware of the qualities of greyhounds. I wrote a blurb into the story, if you recall (a search for Blitzen or Eclaire will turn up the mention). 😉 I’ve owned Brittanies for almost two thirds of my life. I’m pretty aware of the ins and outs of the breed. They’re intelligent, athletic and very active, they’re also sensitive. As bird dogs (who point, as you said, flush and retrieve) there are some definite traits you have to pay attention to. A big issue with newdog was that I got the distinct impression the owner hadn’t met the needs and perhaps got the dog because the breed was pretty (or very not, see above), rather than because she wanted a dog in this particular vein. Currently I’m renting a basement apartment with a rather large yard. I also take the dog for extended walks (having a dog that needs the walks gets me out) and on days I’m writing, my mom picks the dog up after work to take her to an off-leash dog park where she can go and run for 1-2 hours. (My mom, for the record, is awesome). In a similar vein, my dog gets to go to the family cabin and run around for 2-4 days, most weekends between June and October. I’d love to be going with her, but I sort of made sacrifices this year (and a bit last year) to write and for the sake of saving money. Lonely for me, but the dog gets what she craves. The breed, I feel, isn’t a problem. My previous Brittany reached the ripe age of sixteen (and two months)- a pretty healthy age considering the median lifespan of 12.5 years (with 20% reaching 14-15). With newdog not having had enough of what she needs, I think the desire to escape was just her trying to meet that natural instinct to get exercise, to be active, to be athletic. My dog gets that with walks and with the dog park, but newdog’s learned, over the past six years, that she has to escape to get it. So it becomes a thing where newdog would have to be retaught. I’d have to show her, maybe over months or years (she did not seem to be a fast learner) that I could give her that exercise she needs and that she doesn’t need to run as she’s learned. Tricky, because I’d have to give her that exercise (ie. by taking her to dog parks) while having a dog that doesn’t listen and is very hard to train; she wasn’t receptive to rewards and she didn’t learn simple commands after an entire weekend. Innumerable trips to the dog park, ending with a dog that doesn’t come, or trips to the dog park with her dog leashed to my dog (so my dog can drag newdog back to me), clotheslining bystanders and getting tangled in trees. To add to that, I’d have to deal with the coping behaviors she’s learned in the meantime (ie. escaping, very possibly nervous chewing). My current dog is, in many ways, my writing buddy. She (by needing to go out, wanting the ball thrown for her) gets me up and moving every half hour to an hour, so I don’t write for hours straight and miss meals or get stiff. She keeps me company (writing is a lonely profession) and she takes me out on walks to stay active and healthy. To take on a dog that’s a chore isn’t fair to the dog and it won’t jibe with me or what I need. I think you made the right choice. You didn’t take a liking to the dog, your other dog didn’t take a liking to…I’ll go with him, and you can’t provide him with the care he needs. Granted, the old owner can’t either, but there’s only so much you can do…and the old owner has evidently figured out how to make it work over the past six years. The only person I can think of who might disagree with your decision is Bitch, and she is too fictional to care. Yeah, you got to get a dog that you, and the dog you have can deal with. My mom used to have Border Collies. But we sold the cows in 96, and our Border Collie was older and slowing down at time. But a younger Collie would have needed something to herd to keep her occupied. So no more Border Collies. And my mom is getting too old to try and deal with a dog that’s going to need a lot of work. Course there are a lot of fools that just pick the dog for looks, and don’t realize that the Breeds weren’t bred for looks. They were bred for jobs. Like Poodles are hunting dogs. The poodle haircut was done so as to keep the joints warm while keeping the dog from getting tangled in brush. I seem to recall Bitch saying something along those lines… Whatever else you say about her, she is good at taking care of dogs. I can’t believe I missed it! Shippers, get your tinfoil hats of love on: Simurgh just blew Scion! Authy_Silverfur on September 22, 2013 at 07:47 said: That sucks … I see what you did there I’ve been thinking about Worm movies for some reason, so here’s a trailer I’ve been working on in my head: Taylor is eating lunch in a bathroom stall. Voiceover: Meet Taylor Herbert… Juice gets dumped on Taylor Voiceover: …an average high schooler. She goes to school… Shot of Taylor leaving school after getting juiced Voiceover: …does her homework… Shot of Taylor researching the ABB Voiceover: …worries about her clothes… Shot of Taylor brushing spiders off of her essentially completed costume Voiceover: …likes to hang out with her friends… Shot of Taylor, beaten up, meeting with the Undersiders after beating Lung the first time Voiceover: …and sometimes tells little lies to her dad. Shot of Taylor and Danny in the kitchen Danny: I heard you come in late last night. Taylor: …Like I said, I just couldn’t sleep. Voicover: She has had some problems in the past… Shot of Taylor’s trigger event Voicover …but with her newfound friends… Shot of Taylor being attacked by Brutus, Judus, and Angelica Shot of Taylor attacking Bitch …And that’s as far as I’ve been able to get. Suggestions on how to finish? (P.S: I’m working on the assumption that Worm would be divided into multiple movies, the first ending around the time that Lung is caged.) -Voiceover: …she tries to do the right thing. Shot of the heroes in dramatic poses outside the bank. Expletives. (I’d end the movie with a newspaper of Dinah’s kidnapping on page one) A while back, I divided up Worm into five “movies” of six or so arcs each. Hence the division choice. But that ending isn’t bad, either. I think it’s possible to do a book into a movie, but a serial story is probably best translated into a television series. The trick is translating prose into visuals, making things clear without a constant voiceover. To illustrate, a take on Episode one, opening 5-15 minutes: Open with 1.1, an acceleration of 1.2. Go high on the visuals to ‘grab’ the audience, get some key imagery in there. Imagine Taylor, having just kicked the bucket and thrown her bag, contents spilled out over the bathroom floor, standing beside the sink, gripping one edge with one hand, her knuckles white. The lights are off in the bathroom, and the light from the window creates glare in her glasses, making it so you can’t see her eyes (and, with the round frames of her spectacles, echoing the general shape of her lenses in costume). There’s a sort of low, buzzing music with building intensity (like the first 45 seconds of this with more distortion, buildup and ratcheting volume). Taylor slowly curls her hand into a fist, her hand shaking as she finishes, as if she keeps on trying to clench it further. The buildup stops. She relaxes, slumps a little. A pause, silence. And the bugs start flowing in. Music builds up, swelling as the swarm does. We see Taylor from behind, still soaked, dripping, a little Sadako-like with her hair hanging down, wet. The camera pans, and we see her face, eyes included, almost more sad than angry, but her body is rigid. She turns towards the door, her hands at her sides, tendons in her forearms standing out, and the swarm moves with her. A movement of one hand, almost unconscious, and we see a reorganization of the swarm, hornets and bees brought to the forefront, centipedes with pincers lunging around, over and through one another. A mustering of her forces, violence implicit. It’s clear she’s familiar with how they function. They even give her a wide berth, a space 2-3 feet around her that they don’t enter (because at this point, she doesn’t like bugs being on or near her). And then she stops. She sees the cover of the book she was reading. The Triumvirate. Someone starts to open the door, and she stops it from moving. Props her body up against it. Random High School Girl: “Hey!” Taylor flinches, almost angry. Random High School Girl: “I need to go!” Taylor doesn’t move. Neither does the swarm. Random High School Girl: “Please!” Taylor relaxes. The swarm leaves with surprising speed. Random High School Girl forces her way in, sees Taylor, sees the mess. “I don’t even want to know.” Random High School Girl enters a stall. Taylor grabs her things and hurries out of the school. She passes by vandalized posters warning students about the ABB; ‘What do you do if the ABB targets you?’, with an Asian student sort of cowering beneath a shadow. Ignores staring students. Segue to the basement. Taylor recently showered, wearing a towel. The costume comes out. We don’t see Taylor, but we see the pages of her notebook as she tears out the ones she deems worth saving, most stained in grape juice, staking them to the bulletin board behind the workbench. ‘Superhero names.’ She places the novel below that one, almost casually. Measurements for the costume with a basic sketch. Another page, notes along the lines of ‘synthetic spider silk used for protection vs. bears, real spider silk for my costume? Tensile strength like steel, flexible, lightweight.’ A timeline. Calendar. Though the ink bleeds into the damp paper, she uses a marker to scratch out a whole section. Writes ‘tomorrow night’ instead. Underlines it so forcefully it threatens to rip the page. Cut to black. I’d love it, also, if the series had an opening sequence that evolves as the story does. As the destruction and whatnot increases, buildings in the background are shown to be on fire, ruined, destroyed or (eventually) gone entirely. Wanted posters or whatever else have faces crossed out as people are killed. Something in that vein. Interludes could be the pre-credits sequences, 5-15 minutes long at the opening or ends of episodes. Huh. I didn’t expect wildbow to take notice of this. Anyways, onto the ideas. Yeah, that sounds pretty neat. Depending on how the chapters and arcs were divided up (is an arc an episode? a season? half a season? Would one chapter be one episode, and we fit a season together from those?), the interludes could be either opening/closing credits or special standalone episodes (especially the bonus interludes). Depends on the arc. Arcs 1-8 could be season one. Arcs 9-14 could be season two. Arcs 15-19 could be season three. I dunno. Something along those lines. Maybe expand or adapt as needed. How would you communicate the original trigger event? It seems like something execs would insist be put into the pilot as an inciting action. Execs can get real. Changes things too much if you put the trigger into the pilot. Rushes Taylor’s progression, removes her planning/costume creation, makes her more hasty than cautious in the opening installments. Hell Arrow didn’t even show Ollie’s whole time on the island during the first season. We can wait a few episodes to do the flashback to her trigger event. Maybe a nightmare scene with a few flashes to tease the viewers. I mean you can go a few episodes before doing all the origin. I can see the Parahuman Studies class bieng a great way to give exposistion on the setting. Make sure you have a lecture about Trigger Events before revealing Taylor so viewers will start wondering what the fuck happened to give her bug powers. Yeah, a summary’s one thing, but some of us keep the extensive information of our origins under wraps. Seriously, it’s all angsty and horrifying and that’s just not going to make everything happy. You have to find a good time to drop that on someone. Still, you’ll find that people want to talk about themselves and tell their stories. Thing about origin stories is it seems people don’t quite like the people more when they learn what they had to go through as the hero or victim of their own story to get to where they are. Some of that I suspect is because there’s the disconnect between who the person was and who they are known to become. As for executive stuff, we need to avoid executive meddling. Worm doesn’t need to be canceled after one season or have the season reordered. Or, the horror, canceled and the final episode not shown or only shown online. I still remember, The Cape. I still remember. And Fear Itself, I remember you too. Not necessarily. If it was a 5 minute clip intended to be played before the theme tune (e.g. the Fringe pilot) the remainder of the pilot can be kept to a similar pace, with very little deviation from what I believe is your intended plan. Regardless, even if it was in a flashback or something (I believe Taylor describes it out loud to someone in an early chapter?), what visuals would you use to communicate it? I keep coming back to the idea of “darkness of locker turns into a blipverted Scion Interlude.” I mean it changes things if you put it into the scene. Even if you put it in the flashback, you’re removing that unanswered question of “where did her (or any) powers come from” that provides some tension in early-ish entries. Okay. By that logic Miss Militia’s interlude completely gives the game away, as does Grue’s second trigger. (Those might be late enough in the story that it doesn’t matter, but the point stands) And even if the scene where she relays her trigger is unchanged from canon (“canon” here meaning “As written in Shell 4.3”), there would be the perfect opportunity to do a flashback at that point, with the canon description present as voiceover (I suppose that if something is overly revealing about the trigger vision, it can be suppressed by some excuse to cut back to reality mid-description. Might also give the actress a break in the middle of a multi-paragraph monologue). If done well, nothing untoward about the mythos of the setting would be revealed (Besides, the focus of the description is more on the before and after, than the during, if that makes any sense). Also, I would argue that more tension is derived from the misadventures of the girl who can control bugs, than from the question of “Where do powers come from?” However, I feel that my actual question is getting lost here. How would you translate a trigger event to a visual medium? Anyone else remember the first time we saw the Worms or the Entities or whatever you want to call Scion’s species? https://parahumans.wordpress.com/2012/02/28/interlude-7/ Excellent foreshadowing and such, wildbow. I find it interesting how many of Ms. Militia’s greatest worries on the subject turned out to be true… “…Still, [Miss Militia] preferred her faith to uncertainty. The notion that this thing she had seen was something other than a benign entity watching over humanity, that it might be malign, or even worse, that it existed with no conception of the effect it had on mankind? An elephant among gnats? It wasn’t a comfortable thought.” Also, she thought that the being was “she’d seen God, or one of His warrior angels.” Wasn’t Scion the more militant of the pair? Because I was a hypocrite, I was selfish, arrogant, short-sighted and even stupid at times.” Yeah, there’s a reason I don’t particularly care about what happens to Taylor any more, especially as her-friends-of-three-months-whose-dogs-she-cares-about-more-than-people are mostly not particularly sympathetic or interesting (Regent and Bitch were/are interesting but the others not so much). But I’ve invested a lot of time in this, am curious as to how it ends and there are still a couple of other characters I enjoy (the Eight Deadly Words don’t yet apply), so I’ll probably follow it anyway. Why do you not care about Taylor, or find Tattletale, Imp, or Grue interesting? And there was something she could do to maybe save Bastard. Not so for the person. I do not emphasize/sympathize with Taylor for exactly the reasons Taylor says. She is hypocritical, selfish, arrogant, short-sighted and even stupid at times. Her thought processes are not sufficiently interesting to stand alone without the reader empathy. I cannot properly explain why I find some characters interesting and some not. It’s very much a black box, but I will try anyway. Bitch and Regent both have unusual patterns of behaviour and thought, so that may be why they held my interest. Imp is two dimensional. Grue is broken and boring now and hasn’t been around for a while anyway. I’m not even sure Tattletale [i]has[/i] a personality! I care(d) about Eidolon, Alexandria and the Simurgh a lot more than those Undersiders. In contrast I very much like(d) Clockblocker and Weld. Re Bastard: Taylor admitted herself that she was making an excuse and rationalizing when she spent her energy on Bastard and that the reality is she is not a hero and simply doesn’t care very much about the women. On the other hand, Taylor’s still a heck of a lot better than nearly everyone else in the setting because she tries to be good, she tries to help. She has good intentions–it’s just that she is an imperfect human being. And if not being perfect makes someone’s internal monologues unpleasant, don’t read first-person fiction. Imp…well, she may have started out that way, but A. she never had the spotlight much and B. she’s been showing more dimension lately. Besides, Regent was pretty one-dimensional for a while, too–and pretty much the only additional dimensions given later were hating his family and loving Imp. “Broken and boring?” Does not compute. Yeah, if Grue was going through some wangst it would be boring, but he’s trying to live with being broken. You have a point about his absence, though. Tattletale definitely has a personality. Have you read the whole story? Just because she made an excuse doesn’t mean it isn’t true. And caring about someone you know more than someone you don’t doesn’t make you cruel–it makes you human. We like to think that we can care about everyone equaly, but our imperfect minds don’t do well when we try to do stuff like that. Insufficient ability to empathize with total strangers is one of the reasons the world today is so screwed up. And, anyways, what would Skitter have done? She doesn’t have healing powers, a medical degree, or even a first-aid kit. I don’t think Taylor really is any better than average. There are people who are obviously better than her like Chevalier or Weld, many who as far as we know are better people than her like most of the Wards or Protectorate and many who are worse like Shadow Stalker. She cares about her friends and those she knows, but so does every other non-sociopath in the story. Her attempt to play out the role of a hero failed because she really isn’t one. Don’t strawman. I don’t demand perfection or anything close, but a certain ratio of redeeming/interesting to annoying/unpleasant/boring qualities is required for me to care about the protagonist. For instance Kvothe from Name of the Wind has flaws, but I still emphasize with him. Regent had a fair bit more depth than that, his attempt to play the role of the friend and his musing during his intermission helped kept me interested in him. I simply didn’t find Grue post-torture interesting, I do not know why. Yes, I’ve read the whole story, I even left comments on many chapters. You have to have reading comprehension twisted to the level of a biblical literalist to really think that Taylor tended to Bastard rather than the women because she didn’t think there was anything she could do. Okay, wait a minute. You tryin’ to tell me that friggin’ Kvothe is a better realized character? I mean, this isn’t me saying the characterization in Worm is the high tier for literature (but it’s somewhere up there” and I don’t mean to step on the toes of anyone who likes Rothfuss’s books, but the only way I can see Kvothe being a well written character is if he was all along supposed to be the fantasy version of Ignatius J. Reilly. No, I am not. How are Chevalier and Weld better than Skitter? They’re on about the same level in my mind; the only difference is that Skitter started her career as a villain…and a rather nice villain, at that. And why do you not value her redeeming I’m referring to how, for much of the story, his main character trait can be best described as “apathy”. Then how did you not notice that Tattletale does, in fact, have a personality, backstory, the whole nine yards, in fact being one of the more characterized Undersiders? I’m reading that from what I understand of the situation…but if you think there was something Taylor could and should have done, do share. What should Taylor have done? Prayed? They’re battling God, he’s not going to answer. Figuratively. Taylor does not make choices based on morality. She very particularly does not make sacrifices based on morality. That’s not to say that she’s immoral, but she is very definitely amoral. Taylor’s motivations are always based around trying to make something happen that she wants to happen. The ends always justify the means. That leads her to making choices like shooting a small child to death. She doesn’t hold anything up as more intrinsically valuable than her desires about the future. Personally I don’t think it’s fair to say a character isn’t well-fleshed out just because she can’t comprehend altruism. Skitter is a very well-developed character, imo. But in terms of good and evil, there ARE characters who are motivated by altruism, like Chev, and Weld, and Glenn, even. Taylor’s goals are moral, however. Saving Dinah, stopping the end of the world, stuff like that. And things like shooting Aster are pretty well justified (the lesser of two evils–in this case, a quick death or eternal torture). She’s made unpleasant decisions, but I’d say that on average she’s on the whiter side of gray…especially compared to most “heroes” in this world. Given that Taylor’s goals have pretty much always been about helping people past herself, I’d call her altruistic. Even when pursuing these goals is inconvenient or dangerous for her (cough Dinah cough), she still does them. Isn’t doing things and making sacrifices for other people more or less the definition of altruism? Now, I think some of Daniel’s arguments are preposterous but saying Taylor is as good a person as Chevalier is equally absurd. From what we’ve seen of the guy I doubt he’d do to an enemy what Taylor did to Triumph (I have always been a bit disturbed how many people here seem to gloss over what, to me, is her most heinous action). When Eidolon asked to help, Taylor threatened to kill him, when Legend does the same, Chevalier promotes him. I’m pretty confident that if someone with Ingenue’s power set (I’m assuming Ingenue herself doesn’t work on women), that is a particularly nice form of Mind Rape, approached Taylor, she wouldn’t try to reason with him/her at length,give him/her a warning shot and then talk with him/her some more and trying to help him/her. Do you really think that Taylor intended to nearly kill Triumph? She might have delayed in saving her, but considering the presence of highly dangerous individuals who wanted to kill her or send her to the Birdcage, I at least can focus on her intent and eventual actions. And yes, Taylor is a bit more brutal, a bit more willing to kill who she thinks needs to be killed…a bit less willing to trust. I chalk this up to her background more than failings of Taylor. Besides, sometimes the best thing really is to be ruthless and a bit paranoid. Taylor did more than delay help to Triumph. She dangled the only thing that could save him in front of his father and used his life for currency. All to enter back in Coil’s grace so that they could successfully overthrow him later. It sorts of make you go meh when she is outraged that Tagg put her father into the line of fire. I do not see why. Number one: Taylor did, in fact, help Triumph in the end. Did Tagg or his successor even try to undo the harm they did to Danny? And taking away a father’s daughter (by revealing her identity as a supervillain) is worse than what Taylor did, especially as it was more permanent. Danny never got his daughter back. Number two: Tagg violated the truce. You know, that informal agreement that stops villains from attacking or holding hostage heroes’ families, and brings some of the biggest guns that happen to be on the wrong side of the law to fight the Endbringers without fear of arrest? Yeah, Tagg risked all that just to screw with Taylor. Number three: The goals. Taylor wanted to save Dinah; Tagg wanted to bring down Taylor/the Undersiders and/or preserve the PRT’s reputation. Number four: Taylor’s life or liberty was potentially at stake, If she stopped to help Triumph, she could get killed or worse. If Tagg didn’t take Danny into custody…what would happen? Taylor would have probably been less belligerent and such if he hadn’t (again, contributing to his own death and Alexandria’s), and in return the PRT gets…nothing? What was Tagg trying to do there, anyways? Number five: The Triumph thing was an isolated instance. Taylor didn’t toy with other capes’ lives before or again, at least not to that extent. Tagg, on the other hand, violated not only Taylor’s rights but the law repeatedly while in custody, and who knows what he did before or what he would have done after? Hmm, all other capes were already incapacitated and reinforcements were still some tome away. Taylor was under no risk of being killed or Birdcsged. And since you mentioned Alexandria, Taylor did the same thing she did: gambling that the mayor would break woth a loved one at risk. What if instead the mayor, like Taylor with Alexandria, made the ” stupid”, emotional, irrational thing and acted Taylor? The mayor would have been hurt or dead, Triumph would hsve certainly died and the Protectorate would have decided that enough is enough snd gone after Taylor in force. Oh and Dinah would have been deprived of a cousin and maybe an uncle And you misunderstood ime with my comment on Danny. I agree that Tagg was a psychotic bully and an idiot to booth, it’s just the hypocrisy ( see also Taylor vs Eidolon) that rubs me off a little. I have vague recollections of this event, but I will drop the point for the present and let the others stand. We don’t know, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Taylor decided to give the mayor the epipen anyways, or inject him herself. Again, it’s more the scale, repetitiveness, and the fact that Tagg risked the truce for selfish reasons that makes him such an unlikeable character. Has Taylor done horrible things? Yes…but so has everyone else. Taylor has done less, and has her heart in the right place; that puts her head and shoulders above most. We’re kind of forgetting the context around the shit with Triumph. At the time she had a reasonable suspicion that Coil would try to assassinate her, and she needed to make sure that the future she isn’t killed in is better for him than the one where she is. Unless we wanna say that her taking a sniper’s bullet to the head is better than what she did to Triumph. The mayor had a shotgun pointed at her too, and I read the situation as Taylor making absolutely sure he wouldn’t let her give Triumph the medicine and then shoot her anyway. And it’s not like she went remorselessly skipping on her merry way after this. The entire situation kind of broke her and made her try to reconnect with her father. … I’m not sure how you see Tattletale has no personality? I mean, it’s cool if you don’t like Tattletale very much because she’s arrogant and cocky but I’ve always thought that as far as Undersiders go, she’s one of the more developed among them. Presumably the exact same thing she did to save Bastard would’ve worked on the Cape, too. It saved her butt when Scion nearly killed her. BTW, I’m not picking on you, Greatwyrmgold – you just happen to have written at of comments on stuff I felt like responding to. I pretty much agree with you for the rest of this thread below. It’s possible, I suppose, but I’m pretty sure that the cape in question wouldn’t be fine in 10-15 minutes, tops, while Bastard would presumably be OK once Bitch’s power ran out. I suppose it would be easier to figure this stuff out if we knew the kinds of wounds said cape had. No problem; I understand. Heck, I take it as a compliment–“Most of your comments were worth replying to, unlike most of the comments I read from other people.” Frankly, I’d totally save a dog over some jackbooting, blood-sucking, ignorant superhero pig-dog, with some exceptions for heroes who aren’t shit. Besides, atleast one of those adjectives can be used to describe literally everyone in the setting. Can’t tell if serious… >.> <.< Most of Cauldron. Armsmaster. Gavel. Shadow Stalker. Most of the Irregulars. Worm is full of “heroes” who are actually rather selfish, immoral, or otherwise unpleasant people…and not everyone fighting is a hero. The villains are worse. And, again, Skitter didn’t think she could do anything for the dying cape. Considering that they’re fighting Scion… And 90% of the other heroes we’ve seen are cogs in a corrupt, fucked up institution that was one bad day away from either going out and out totalitarian or collapsing entirely. When a relatively non-shitty hero like Miss Militia was willing to allow people like Piggot and Tagg go hog-wild with their powers I can’t really take for granted that most superheroes are “the good ones”. Shit, I’d say the same about heroes in the Marvel and DC universe. Fuck superheroes. I can’t say that. When people want to make a difference but can’t because they’re trapped in some sort of machine or another (remember, Ms. Militia was brought into the first Wards team due to her power being discovered when she was trying to fly to America), I count their intent in their favor. Partly because that alone puts them above most characters in this screwed-up world. I think it says something, though, when an organization supposedly meant to help the world gets in the way of actually helping the world. And I think Taylor gets some leeway to go after what she wants now. She’s spent so long putting it off, she might as well. It says more about the organization and/or the world than the individual, however. And yes, I agree. I’d say the superheroes have a lot more potential to change things than anyone else; all that needed to happen was someone trying to reach out to Rachel, or Armsmaster trying to pull Taylor back from a villain career. The heroes not doing these kinds of things things is a breach in their duties as far as I’m concerned. Superheroes are supposed to be inspirations, not just door-kicking cops dressed in tights. Sure, the system is 90% victims and 10% evil bastards. But there are probably a lot more victims outside the system than within it. There’s really only so much they can do. But yeah. The system is screwed up. @Reveen: So because the heroes try to hold themselves to an impossibly higher standard than the villains, they are worth less than dogs? No, because they fail at basic standards, and because Taylor did all she could, there is nothing wrong with what Skitter did. Again, what was Skitter to do? The Protectorate is not particularly fucked up or corrupt (except with regards to Taylor, she should have gone to the Birdcage for her many crimes). It was rather good as far as human institutions go. Compare it to our modern day police force. Would you really save a dog over a (extremely effective) policeman? The heroes are spending their time trying to save people and enforce the rules of society like don’t attack people, kidnap them, threaten to kill them or steal their shit (when this does not happen you get warlordism, which is really bad). Piggot and Tagg (especially the former) never did anything that was worth starting a revolt about. Revolts are very costly. Tagg just attempted to capture a dangerous criminal who as far as most knew was quite willing to murder people to stay in control (Triumph) and who was setting a precedent that could cost millions of lives (the “don’t mess with unmasked capes” rule is less important than the “don’t take over cities” rule). Piggot just did her job. Seriously? That’s some serious whitewashing right there. I mean, Jesus Christ let’s look at the track records of the people we’re dealing with shall we? Piggot: – Failed or even refused to curb the psychotic behavior of Shadow Stalker which ending in Taylor triggering and starting this whole mess in the first place. -Failed to provide the Wards with adequate therapy after Leviathan slaughtered several of their teammates, they only got it because Weld lobbied for it. -Tried to maneuver the Travelsiders to be killed in the blast zone of the airstrikes she ordered against the Slaughterhouse Nine, also acting as an obstacle to cooperation against the squad of superpowered serial killers. -Sent Dragon suits to attack the Undersiders while tons of civilians were in the line of fire and escalating the situation in a battered city that needed recovery time. -Was a bigot who used her position to pursue her vendetta against parahumans in general. -Sent a pair of giant fuck-off cyborgs to bust into a school and publicly out a supervillain, putting hundreds of teenagers at risk and causing more fighting in the recovering disaster zone, while also sending a goon squad to accost Taylor’s dad and set up an ambush, another big no-no with the truce. -Abused police procedures to psychologically pressure a surrendering supervillain. Including oredering an invasive body cavity search without probable cause. -Actively tried to prevent compromise that would have benefited the Protectorate and put hundreds of people in danger of an Undersider retaliation. -Helped Alexandria pull a fucked up gambit to mentally break Taylor so they’d have an excuse to either kill her, or toss her in the birdcage without being questioned. -Was obviously psychotic, like, seriously psychotic. The guy was a violent thug who goes on deranged rants about how much he wants to shoot teenagers in the head. I mean, holy shit, the PRT being a complete fucking disaster of an organization is one of the biggest themes hanging over half the serial. This is not subtext! “(except with regards to Taylor, she should have gone to the Birdcage for her many crimes)” Wait, what? The bank robbery, the attack on the fundraiser, the fight with Triumph, probably should have gotten her arrested. However, let’s take a look at her other crimes: Warlordism: A direct reaction to the lack of protection anyone could afford anyone after Leviathan, after the Slaughterhouse 9. Remember that everyone wanted Brockton Bay to be condemned after that last. Besides, what exactly did Skitter do to her subjects that would be worthy of such rabid persecution? And who exactly did the people trust at the high school? Assault: I’m specifically thinking of Valefor here, but I’m not sure how you could argue that the Undersiders should have stood by and let the PRT/Wards/Protectorate take care of it. Murder: Thomas Calvert’s death was specifically to rescue Dinah. Tagg’s and Alexandria’s deaths were in direct response to the faked deaths of her friends, which were the capstone on a weekend-long session of mental torture, at best. (And Tagg did not “attempt to capture” Taylor, unless you’re talking about outing her at the high school, which backfired badly to say the least. Taylor gave herself up willingly, at which point he chucked her in a cramped cell, subjected her to a highly invasive cavity search, and specifically moved to isolate her from the support of her father. And when she blew his scheme to wear her down wide open, he pulled a gun on her – a restrained teenage girl – and would have shot her if Taylor hadn’t moved her bugs to defend herself) [sarcasm] I can’t imagine why there are so many American villains around[/sarcasm]. Remember what Taylor said about the sliding scale of good and evil bieng an illusion? The PRT was always pretty fucked. Remember Cauldron was manipulating it from day one. It started to get better once it was under new managment, namely Chevalier. And lets face it, the wormverse had problems. Taylor had reason to always be suspicious of the system. Because when a girl undergoes a bullying campaign so severe it ends up with her having to be sent to the hospital and institunilized and nobody actually comes forward about it, nobody does anything about it, then yeah the system failed. That isn’t to say there are no good heroes. Chevalier and Dragon sure seem to be. Legend really wasn’t that bad, he just didn’t want to face that Cauldron and his friends were monsters. Basiclly if there is one thing you can say for sure in Worm, things are not black and white. “Would you really save a dog over a (extremely effective) policeman?” If I had a chance to save the dog and knew that the policeman was not just a dangerous parahuman criminal broken out of the Birdcage by Cauldron or something (yeah, I threw out the metaphor), yes. “The heroes are spending their time trying to save people and enforce the rules of society like don’t attack people, kidnap them, threaten to kill them or steal their shit…” Except when they did things like getting various people killed (Armsmaster), killing people (Shadow Stalker), trying to provoke surrendering villains so they have an excuse to kill them (Tagg), or steal the things that matter most to a person like their life and family (Tagg, when he revealed Taylor’s secret identity…which also violated the truce, endangering the world’s future ability to deal with the Endbringers). “Piggot and Tagg (especially the former) never did anything that was worth starting a revolt about. Revolts are very costly. Tagg just attempted to capture a dangerous criminal who as far as most knew was quite willing to murder people to stay in control (Triumph) and who was setting a precedent that could cost millions of lives (the “don’t mess with unmasked capes” rule is less important than the “don’t take over cities” rule).” 1. Skitter turned herself in. Tagg then proceeded to violate her rights in several ways, from the completely needless restraints to the cavity search. And this isn’t a one-time thing–similar issues with restraints were noted in Canary’s interlude, and she was about as strong as Skitter (ie not very). 2. Tagg was the one setting precedent, and incidentally violating the truce by unmasking Skitter and messing with her. Oh, and he also tried to make Skitter go into a psychotic rage, which was intended to set up a scenario where Skitter could be killed or Bidcaged without a trial. It also succeeded in causing the death of Alexandria, head of the PRT and among the most powerful heroes in the world (as well as his own), which would never have happened if he had decided to stick with the law and not try to screw with Skitter. In short, while the PRT and Protectorate isn’t as screwed up as (say) the S9, they’re still not the shining paragons of good that the Wormverse media wants them to be. All the points raised above are very good, I’ll just add another one: the Triumvirate who is closely affiliated to a clearly shady and illegal organisation. Two of them even know of the numerous crimes against humanity committed by said organisation. At least one of them (Alexandria) acts as an enforcer for said organization on a semi-regular basis, helping them kidnap people to torture. All of them, included the mostly innocent Legend, aided, abetted and protected the Cauldron capes inside the Protectorate, all of whom, as we know, owe several favours to Cauldron, favours that can , usually are, go against the Protectorate directives (and let’s face not many will do what Battery did and try to do the right thing in the end). This practice ended only after the Triumvirate was ousted and Chevalier decided to expose Cauldron capes and at least one of them (Pretender) murdered a PRT agent to try and cover his tracks. Oh and there’s the whole Costa-Brown=Alexandria, which is a direct mockery of the entire raison d’être of the PRT. And let’s not forget these incidents: The PRT/Protectorate allowed Armsmaster to come back as Defiant after he flagrantly violated the truce and went to great lengths to hide it during the Leviathan attack. Every single person in the room knew that Defiant was Armsmaster, yet they chose to say nothing. Coil was presumably in a high-ranking position in the PRT before being named the Director in Brockton Bay, meaning he was actively working to corrupt the system and was using their resources as part of his rise to power. They railroaded and condemned Canary in a kangaroo court over what was essentially an accident. They turned a blind eye to Madcap having prevented numerous dangerous parahumans from being sent to the Birdcage, all so they could bolster their own numbers. And they also actively tried to undermine Taylor when she joined the Wards. Remember the talk show and the absurd stakeout requirements? Was there any positive gain to be had from these? No, they were all done out of hurt pride. They threatened to blackmail Dragon by handing over control over the Birdcage to Saint, a known villain. @Scolopendra: and let’s not forget that while they didn’t know that Calvert was Coil, they DID know he shot his own commanding officer to save his skin… As of this time there are too many comments to reply to in a reasonable time frame. I will simply state that with two irrelevant exceptions (I had forgotten about Piggot’s attempt to lure the Undersiders into the bombing area and the petty treatment of Taylor after joining the Wards) none of the replies so far have contained facts that are both true and not something I was aware of at the time I wrote my replies. Additionally, none contain any lines of reasoning I had not already considered. My views have not changed significantly. I lost sympathy for Taylor in chapter 15.9: “Was trying to figure out when it was I lost sympathy for Taylor and stopped cheering her on. I think it was this chapter where she essentially raped Triumph in front of his dad to get the latter to argue for a different policy. Let’s remove the bugs and imagine someone else doing this: You’re eating dinner with your family and someone barges in and threatens you and your family. When you try and defend your family you are rendered helpless and spiny things covered in liquid fire are shoved into your mouth, penis and anus. Small pins are stuck in your skin in every part of your body, your eyelids and nose have small spines put in them. You are being choked to death. Your father is then threatened with your death. Your rapist is not caught and can rape you again from anywhere. As a side note, your dad will not recover from this, nor will his career. The trauma of that is IMMENSE! Worse than all but the most violent rapes (and every bug you see will be a trigger). They say rape can never be justified, but Taylor seems to have managed pretty well.” Wow,you are just bona fide not answering to the things said above?fine,I’ll answer the same thing I answered to you the other time:Rape cannot be justified not because it isthe worst thing you can do to someone (killling him might be worse,killing his friends/childrens/parents or torturing him usually is)but because,unlike the ther examples,rape can only be performed for selfish motives,and it is,indeed,one of the worse things you can do.Compare being a soldier and cutting off the arm of an oppoment soldier who was a pianist and loved it,but was blackmailed into joining into the army of an evil regime:the action is worse than rape,but justified.Also,she regretted it afterwards,if you do not believe in redemption,then you must assume every good person is sinless,surely,the justice system exists not because criminals are villains,but because we must protect ourselves,and there is no surefire way to judge motives and/or redemption. You wanna reverse the situation without powers?fine.You are a not so evil aristocrat that nevertheless enjoys his food while people outside are going hungry,thinking of enforcing a new law,killing many,but saving most,of the foodless people.A member of la resistance comes in,unsure about her actions,but knowing your actions are morally grey,and being blackmailed into a hard mission.She wants you to give her the position of the aristocrat,because she partly believes she can save everyone,she partly believes she cannot do a worse job,and she does it for altruistic reasons anyway,as she knows she will only save an innocent another man blackmails her with if she wins,as her way of saving people is better.But before she can start talking,a gung ho member of the other resistance faction,which is much more fanatic,and with which she only cooperates due to aforementioned blackmail,shoots your daugther on the arm,and starts threatening you.Your son,who was a trained soldier,shoots the other guy and tries to arrest the resistance.She shoots his gun arm,but he keeps fighting,and he does it effectively,so she shoots him,a lot,though not enough to kill him.Knowing all chance of peaceful negotiation is lost,and that she is likely to be killed if she fails,leaving both the innocent and her people to a bad fate,she holds him hostage,so his father concedes. Not so cut and clear a situation when you consider more of the subleties,is it,mister knight templar who only wants mary sue protagonists who never end up in a situation they cannot resolve in a non grey way/who only wants people whose only fault is physical or mental weakness rather than reasonable flaws? You seem to have an extreme case of black and white insanity,mister. Yep, Gavel shows up and Scion stops to concentrate on him. They stopped…it was hammer time. Visler on September 22, 2013 at 20:40 said: Apparently, noone can touch this. He died because he was 2 legit 2 quit. Now he is off to Gangstas Paradise puts hand on forhead and shakes it slowly back n forth Oh no, this was just…bad. Long conversation above where a whole lot of people seem to be missing the point that Scion put a lot of emphasis for shards finding their way into younger, immature humans, with correspondingly less developed personalities. And the shards seek conflict. Worm capes are almost universally rather violent in the way they interact with the world, especially the natural capes. There are exceptions, but Taylor is not one of them. Scion did this to humanity. His mate would have helped him do it if she hadn’t died. They introduced this plague of super powered beings with preprogrammed violent tendencies to our world. Some readers though, they are upset when a teenager with a superpower gravitates to violence or threats of violence to solve problems? Some readers are upset when such an unbalanced teen chooses paths of action based on preserving future power and combat capability rather than compassion? Need to look a bit deeper into the story folks, if you want to see who is at fault for most of the misery, even before Scion went nutters. Yes, shards feast on conflict and manipulate their hosts to create it and cause it. Yes, the younger the trigger event and the longer people have powers the more easier it is for the shards to manipulate their hosts. This dordn’t mean that you can blame eveything on them. Chevalier and Militia were orignal Wards which means they triggered young and have been parahumans for a long time and yet they are some of the more balanced and well-adjusted people in the series (MM’s trigger also makes Taylor’s look trivial by comparison). The reverse is also true for Jack Slash, arguably the worst individual in the story, who had a non-violent shard and committed atrocity because it was in his ( human ) nature. Are the shards also to blame for the violence in Worm? Yes. Is saying ” she’s a teenager who got powers from a warmongering space parasite, of course she ‘s going to be violent ” a bit naïve? Also yes. I think it’s been stated many times in the story and outside of it too that superpowers brings out the best and worst of humanity. Sure, some of the blame lies on the shards and their tendency for violence but for the most part it’s because of the people the shards are attached to. The people that the shards are attached to certainly matter. Most US teens with a superpower and an itch to use it violently would not have been able to avoid using it on Emma in the scenarios that Emma forced on her. Comparing MM to Taylor in anything other than the fact that they got powers is laughable. MM grew up in a third world country, and was probably more of an adult mentally at 10 than Taylor was at 16. In the third world, if you are not rich, you grow up fast, or not at all. In the US, I know people who are middle aged, who did not come from wealthy families, that still act like kids. But back to your point, yes, the personality matters. That’s not all though. Think about alcohol. Some very nice people use alcohol, and become mean or obnoxious drunks, because alcohol weakens their inhibitions. I see the shards working in much the same way. They weaken inhibitions against violence, and the less adult you are when you are introduced to the inhibition weakening, the greater the effect will be on development. Wildbow, what was Rachel’s classification by the Protectorate after the bank robbery? I can’t imagine that it changed. Why would it have? Okay, what was it before the bank robbery? Writing a fanfic, trying to get my details right. September 26th. Next bonus chapter. Neat. Arcman on September 25, 2013 at 18:54 said: First time posting here. Love Worm, I’ve been binge archiving it all week. I have a question though. Wildbow was Winter one of Crane the Harmonious’s child soldiers going by their respective back-stories? Nope. That’d be a cool connection, but it’s not one I put in my notes. If you hop on over to IRC (I think there’s a link somewhere), I dished some backstory on Crane there, for one of the people who’re writing fanfiction. Long story short, she’s a martial artist who uses her keen awareness of movements to craft martial arts perfectly suited to a given power, body type, personality and so on. In attempting to perfect her art, she kidnapped children with powers. They weren’t soldiers, but students. Writing tonight’s chapter, so I can’t take the time to find and post the actual notes, but maybe a kind person from IRC can comment with the expanded notes I offered up (or, as I said, you could head over there and ask for Miss Panda). Thanks, I’ll do so. 🙂 “Once the bead was in place, every” is all italicized. I think only “every” is meant to be italicized. RIP Kid Win. Despite the lack of name change you did good dude. RIP Crane. Perhaps a mild pedophile but stepped up when it counted. Thank freaking god that Parian had the wherewithal to get Foil away from the fight. Yes the girl has a power that is specifically designed to hurt/kill Scion but we still need to figure out just how the fuck to use it in just the right spot. Good to know he targets her as a threat though. Fingers crossed she and Parian survive the endgame. Hmm, you know while I can understand the mind numbing depression that would accompany a vision like that…I would think that on some level that would actually be heartening. To know that he actively had formed everything to win yet the second entity is still dead and gone means he screwed up. The chance might be small but it’s there. Was King of Cups the guy with the second trigger for the vision? Sucks about him and his wife/girlfriend/friend. I was really starting to like those two. They seemed to be actual team players which is rare at this point. Lung…damn. Dude just fought head to head with Scion and came out alive and relatively unscathed. Holy fuck. Imagine what he could do if he psyched himself out for more than just two years… Damn, Vista has become badass! Somebody find the damn Irregulars and slap them upside the head! Stupid fools! Take out Doc, sure but leave Doormaker alone! Please let Bastard be okay! I love the wolf pup! So what the heck did the Smurf’s fancy glass tube do? It didn’t seem to do much at all… You need a class in what constitutes a proper noun. So many names in these last few chapters have not been capitalized. Also, “galaxy” is unnecessary here. It’s obvious. Rude. Blub on November 26, 2018 at 21:58 said: Well, you are Queen Administrator… so admister. Every chapter of this damn story leaves me in existential despair. Leave a Reply to Mengha Cancel reply	cc/2019-30/en_middle_0059.json.gz/line1801
__label__cc	0.574705	0.425295	“We knew it would come to this,” Legend said. I turned around. My hands were full as I unbelted a tightly folded blanket and draped it over one of the wounded. A surprising number of wounded, in the end. Twenty or so injured from an aircraft that had been partially obliterated, eighteen more people who’d had their legs sliced off. Nearly forty Dragon’s Teeth with mild injuries, their armor melted to their faces, chests, arms and legs. Scion had tried his usual assortment of attacks, and they’d evaded them. Enhanced strength from the costumes, predictive technology from the onboard artificial intelligences. So he’d used a power they couldn’t dodge, a power they couldn’t block. A light that radiated outward and melted the materials of their costumes. Cauldron hadn’t been there to reinforce the group. If they had been, it might have been a staging ground. Instead, the group had folded and Scion had come after the portal that was closest. “What do you mean?” I asked. “When we were predicting what would happen with the Endbringers, we said that we’d be forced to regroup, consolidate our forces. Every fight would result in losses, so we’d have to abandon positions, move people from an abandoned post to keep numbers up.” “I can see that,” I said. An outpost abandoned. The world Defiant and Dragon had been looking after was being abandoned as a lost cause. There were countless people still alive, but they were spread out, and there was no way to mount a proper defense with our forces spread too thin. “If there’s an upside,” Legend said, his tone changing as if he were forcing himself to be less grim. “Tattletale said we’re making headway. It doesn’t look like it, but we’re taking chunks out of him. The strongest of us survive, we regroup, see what works, we’re stronger when it comes to the next fight.” Except he’s indiscriminate. He’s killing the ones who can actually affect him, because he’s being reactive. We’re not stronger by virtue of the strongest surviving and consolidating because the only difference between this fight and the next is that we’ll be less. I kept my mouth shut. “Defiant and Dragon will be joining you guys here, to make up for the ones you lost. You’ll have Leviathan, at the very least. Chevalier and I will be a matter of minutes away.” A few minutes is too long, I thought. But I didn’t want to state the obvious, didn’t want to argue. I was trying to be good, trying not to raise any problems with a guy who could well be sensitive over the fact that I’d murdered one of his closest companions a few years back. Besides, I knew that this pep talk was most likely Legend trying to reassure the wounded. Maybe even him trying to reassure himself. He took his time, putting fresh bandages on a wound. “I’ve followed your career,” Legend said. “I’ve seen you on the battlefields, fighting the Endbringers, old and new. The bugs are noticeable.” “I’m nothing special.” “You rendered Alexandria brain dead,” Legend told me. “That warrants attention.” “Fair enough,” I said. I managed to get another blanket unbelted from the arrangement of straps that kept it in a folded position and then draped it over someone. Legend moved the end of the blanket, where it rested on the patient’s wounded foot. “I wanted to know who it was that had killed Rebecca. I kept an eye on everything you did in the Protectorate, looked for the details about your past. I understand if that seems creepy…” “I think I get it. You were close to her.” “I felt close to her. In the end, though, there was a gap between my feelings and the reality. Still is, I suppose. Go through enough with people, build something from the ground up, you form ties.” “Yeah,” I said. I looked over my shoulder. Mai, one of the kids Charlotte and Forrest were looking after, was there, alongside one of Rachel’s henchmen and a puppy. Giving comfort to a child from the other settlement who’d been burned by the same effect that melted the costumes of the Dragon’s Teeth. The burns weren’t horrible, but it made it hard to tell the child’s ethnicity or gender. But the child was scratching the puppy behind the ear. Rachel stood nearby, arms folded, stern and ominous. I felt a kind of fondness, tempered by a kind of hesitance, like I couldn’t let myself hold on too tight to the friendship and familiarity because she could be dead by the end of the day. Though it was sharper than it had been in the past, it wasn’t an unfamiliar feeling. Legend was looking at me when I turned back to him. “Yeah.” “It doesn’t always make for the most sound decisions.” “No, it doesn’t,” I agreed. I had to scoot out of the way as some doctors hurried by with fresh tools and equipment. Removing the dissolved materials from burned flesh was something of a task, and there were a lot of people to help. “I always knew there was something wrong, underneath it all, but there were bigger things to focus on. You finish dealing with one Endbringer attack or a potential war with parahuman attacks on both sides, it demands all of your focus. You’re left drained, dealing with the event or the aftermath, and then you need to recuperate, you have an organization to manage. There’s never a moment where you can stop, take a deep breath, and then say, ‘now is the moment where I address that nagging doubt I had the other day’. Now is the moment I call so-and-so out on that less-than-complete truth they used while we were elbow-deep in Indonesian cyborg super-soldiers.” “I think I know exactly what you mean.” “I think it’s very possible you do,” he said. “But you can’t dwell on it,” I said. “If you don’t give it the necessary attention, then how do you prevent it from becoming a cycle?” “You don’t. You look back at your reasons for making the choices when you made the choices, you recognize that you didn’t address or act on your suspicions and doubts because you had higher priorities at the time, and you make peace with it.” “Have you? Made peace with it?” “I’m on my way there, Legend.” “I’m not sure I want to go there,” he said. “Give me a hand? Hold his leg up?” Gore. A foot reduced to something unrecognizable. The man would probably lose it. But Legend still tended to the limb with care. Almost gentle. I tried to be as graceful in keeping the leg in the air. The soldier made a noise of pain as Legend cleaned the foot, using a laser to sever a tag of flesh that was holding a piece of boot on. I reached out and held the man’s hand. “You came in here for a reason,” Legend said. I looked up. “It’s not about taking care of the wounded,” he said. “You’re not devoting a great deal of attention to keeping an eye on Hellhound, either. Yes, you could use your swarm to discreetly observe her, to discreetly observe anyone in your range, but I don’t think that’s why you came here.” I started to respond, but the soldier’s leg started kicking, an almost involuntary nerve reaction. I had to pull my hand from his to hold his leg as still as possible. We eased it down until he was lying flat, his leg on the bed. I pulled a blanket over him, as carefully as I could. “You have a question, or questions,” Legend said, “But you’re not asking them because you’re worried about the response. Either it’s something touchy, or there’s another reason why you’re holding back.” I sighed. “If you don’t have an answer for me, then I’m not sure I know what I’m going to do next.” “So this is about something only I would know?” “Basically,” I said. “We don’t have access to that broad a pool of people, right now.” “Okay,” Legend said. “What do you need to know?” “Cauldron’s portals.” “Closed. They’re created by a parahuman called Doormaker. The Doctor told me he was blind and deaf to his surroundings, but I think it’s far more likely that it’s to do with another parahuman she partnered him with. Someone who grants sensory awareness. I think the Doctor gave Doormaker too much exposure to this parahuman and destroyed or atrophied his other senses. One of those nagging doubts I never acted on.” We passed by Rachel, Rachel’s minion and Mai. I gave Rachel a little nod of acknowledgement as we stepped outside. Then we stepped outside. There was a shattered sign over the boarded-up windows. Apparently Tattletale had made some business deals and tried to get things in place for this to become a city like any one in Earth Bet. The pieces were there, but the furniture had yet to be installed, the food yet to be supplied. An empty fast food place, now a makeshift hospital. Eat fresh? I thought. Not likely. I took in the scene. Capes were still reeling from the attack, and again, it was the monsters and the lunatics that seemed to be standing, while others sat, recovering, catching their breath, mustering their courage. Nilbog, engaged in conversation with Glaistig Uaine. Four of the Heartbroken, with Imp and Romp. A maskless Imp gave Bonesaw a glare as the girl hurried, in the company of Marquis and Panacea, to the fast food place Legend and I had just left. Lung was alone, looking angry, frustrated, almost more agitated than he’d been before or during the fight. His eyes were on Leviathan, who was down by the water, but I didn’t get the impression Leviathan was the source of the frustration. Parian and Foil were together, Foil with her mask off. They’d curled up in a space between two large bins of food, Foil resting her head on Parian’s shoulder, their hands and fingers entwined. Tattletale was caught up in a conversation with Knave of Clubs, and fell under the Simurgh’s shadow. The Simurgh, for her part, seemed to be busy building other tinker devices, drawing on the abilities of tinkers in the immediate area. Vista was sitting on a rooftop, two stories high. Her eyes were closed, her hands set behind her so she could lean back a bit. Her face turned towards the sky. There were other capes in the area, looking a little more serious, focused on business. Chevalier was with Defiant and Dragon, Black Kaze, Saint, Masamune and Canary. Some of them drifted off, making their way towards us. “If it helps,” Legend said, “I don’t think Doormaker is dead. There have been two interruptions in his power, to date. One followed an earthquake. He was unhurt, but his partner… well, it was a clue that a partner existed. His doors all went down simultaneously the moment the earthquake hit the facility. I don’t think his power is the type that would outlast him after death, if it was so easily interrupted while he was alive.” “So he’s alive because the doors are still open in places.” “Alive and unable or unwilling to use his power,” Legend said. I nodded. “So is it Cauldron running or is it another agency?” I could see Legend’s expression change. I’d heard him talk before, saying as much, but his face was what told me, above all else, that he was burdened by regrets. “I wish I could say it was the latter.” “But you don’t know.” “I remain in the dark when it comes to Cauldron.” “What about Satyrical?” I asked. “He was investigating with his team, wasn’t he?” “He was, but he tends towards radio silence, Pretender’s people have since well before the Vegas teams cut ties with the Protectorate. They claimed it was because there would inevitably be a parahuman who could uncover them if they left channels open. Now… well, isn’t that the way most things were? Secrets, lies, conspiracies.” “It is, but-” I tried to find a way to politely say what I was trying to say. “But?” “With all due respect, and I really do mean that because I respect you, I respect that you’ve participated in the fights, I get where you’re coming from…” “You’re spending too much time couching what you’re saying,” Legend said. “Rest assured, I can handle what you’re about to throw at me. I think worse things to myself all the time.” “I’m impatient. That’s all. Scion’s going to attack again, and I don’t plan to be here,” I said. “You want a portal to get out of here,” Legend said. “No,” I said. “I don’t want an escape. I want to act.” “We’re acting,” Legend said. “We’re reacting.” “If you have ideas for something pre-emptive, I think we could all stand to hear it.” I shook my head. “Nothing definitive.” “Even something that isn’t definitive.” “I want to find Cauldron. They have contingency plans we know they haven’t put into effect yet, and they have answers they’ve yet to provide.” “Cauldron is very good at leading people to believe that they have the answers and then disappointing,” Legend said. “Take it from someone who knows. Ah. I’m doing it again, aren’t I? Like an old man.” He smiled, and I smiled a little too. “You’re an old man?” Chevalier asked. His group had just joined us. “Taylor here was just very politely trying to tell me I’m wasting her time on reminiscing and regrets.” “You have something better to do?” Defiant asked me. “Defiant,” Dragon said, admonishing him. She was in her armor, but had her helmet off. The face was real. Plain, but real. She’s an A.I. A false person. What else had Saint said? She’s deceiving us? It’s all an act? “…came out wrong,” Defiant was saying. Very deliberately, he said, “I am genuinely curious what you’re doing, Weaver.” Dragon smiled a little, as if a private thought had crossed her mind. The doubts Saint had seeded dissipated. Ninety percent of them. “I was telling Legend I want to go after Cauldron,” I said. “A member of the Chicago Wards was saying that sending Satyrical to go investigate is like sending a fox to guard the henhouse.” “Satyrical has definite ties to Cauldron,” Dragon said. “If nothing else, Pretender maintains connections to the group. If Cauldron is running, or if they are pulling something covert, then it’s very possible Satyrical is on board or is going to be brought on board.” Chevalier shifted the Cannonblade to his other hand, then stabbed the point into the ground. It looked different. His armor looked different. Gold and black, instead of gold and silver. “It also means he and the Las Vegas capes are well equipped to know how Cauldron operates, and identify clues others would miss. We sent them with others we could trust. They’ve been reporting in on schedule.” I opened my mouth. Chevalier spoke before I could. “-With stranger and master precautions in place.” “You’re strong when it comes to improvising,” Chevalier told me. “We’ve got a moment to breathe. We think he’s hitting another world, one we don’t have access to. We’re regrouping, figuring out who goes where, and we’re trying to set things up so we can mobilize faster. I can’t tell you what to do. I wouldn’t if I could. But we could use you here.” “We’re losing, here,” I said. “Legend was being positive, but… I don’t think we can really delude ourselves that far. He’s tearing us apart while holding back. If we put up a fight or if we don’t hold back, he hits us harder, like he hit the Guild. He can always top us, and he can always say he’s had enough and then just nuke the continent. That’s not a recipe for an eventual win.” “I don’t even think that’s the worst of it,” Tattletale said, finally having broken away from Knave of Clubs to join this conversation. “He’s evolving, maturing. If you can even call it that. He was a blank slate, then almost like a baby, flinging destruction around like a baby practices moving their arms, as if to remind himself he could… and then he was like a child in this fight… except for the bit about Queen of Swords. That suggested he’s almost entering an adolescent phase. Something more complex than just raw fear and awe. Loss, despair. He’s going to start looking for ways to really hurt us.” “Instead of just annihilating us?” Legend asked. “Torture?” “Mental, emotional, more involved physical torture. Up until he hits adulthood. Then he probably destroys us, completely and utterly. I’d be surprised if we lasted more than two days, rate he’s developing.” “You’re talking about him as if he were human,” Saint said. “He is,” Tattletale said. “It’s the only reason he’s doing this, and it’s the only way we have to truly make sense of him, and it’s his primary means of making sense of us. Which is why he did it. He’s got our general biological makeup. He thinks, he feels, he dreams, he hurts, but it’s all buried so far under mounds and mounds and mounds of power and security, it doesn’t really supplant him. It’s never been exposed to the real world, really, so the human side of him hasn’t matured or developed.” “A weakness?” Chevalier asked. “Yes, but not a weakness we’re going to be able to exploit,” Tattletale said. “He’s too careful, and he would have foreseen it. Adapted around it, probably. Be awfully stupid for something like him to adapt traits of their targets and adapt vulnerabilities at the same time. Knowing this could help, but it’s not going to be the weak point we can target to finish him off. That makes zero sense.” “We know a lot of things like that,” I said. “A lot of tidbits about his behavior or who he is or what he is. But a lot of it isn’t reliable information. He cared a lot about my clone decoys multiplying during the fight on the oil rig, but he didn’t give a damn this time.” “He’s advancing, evolving. His focus is changing,” Tattletale interjected. “We know so many critical details,” I said, “And we need more. We need a way of paring truth away from fiction, or determining what’s no longer true. I don’t know for sure what we’re going to do to stop him, but I think any plans I have are going to start or end with Cauldron.” I looked around the group. Men and women, all in armor that made them stronger, bulkier or taller, it seemed. Legend was comparatively small, but he had presence to make up for it, even as tired and worn out as he seemed to be. Flying, casual flying as Legend tended to do, gave one a little more stature. I wasn’t short, but it felt like Tattletale and I were mortals in the midst of giants. Defiant, in particular, seemed somehow imposing. His body language was familiar with the way he’d naturally set his feet apart, his hand on his weapon. Even the place we were standing, it stirred memories. We were at the north end of the Bay, even. “Yes. The plan makes sense,” Defiant said. “I’ll trust you on this one.” Dragon reached out to grab and squeeze his hand. “What do you need?” Defiant asked me. “I was thinking I’d bring some of the capes that can’t or won’t participate in the fight against Scion,” I said. My eyes fell on Canary. “Me?” Canary squeaked. “Anyone, but capes like you,” I said. “Support capes who can’t support in circumstances like this. Strangers who can’t use their power on Scion. Capes like that.” “And if you can’t access Cauldron?” Chevalier asked. “I don’t want to put too fine a point on it, but your actions when you assumed control of the Simurgh were… heavy handed. You told an ex-teammate in the Wards that you weren’t intending to be a hero anymore. I don’t want to tell you I won’t cooperate any more than I want to tell anyone I won’t cooperate, but you’d be asking us to put a fair amount of power in your hands by sending capes your way. I… don’t know that I feel confident sending capes to you, if I don’t know how they’ll be put to use.” “Would you allow me to talk to other capes?” I asked. “You don’t have to send them my way, but maybe I could inquire?” “I’m not going to stand in anyone’s way,” Chevalier said. “I’m not the bad guy, here. But I’ve got to lead this battle, and I’ve got to do what I can to make sure things don’t get worse. If a cape needs to go, if they don’t have the courage to stand and fight, I’m not going to make them. I’ll try to convince them otherwise, but I won’t make them. And if they think they’ll be more useful elsewhere, I won’t stop them there, either.” I nodded. “I’ll settle for that.” “Access to computers,” I said. “Tools. Resupplies. The Dragonfly.” He reached out of his pocket and withdrew a knife. He reversed it and extended it to me, handle first. I reached for the weapon, then saw Defiant pull his hand back. “Be aware of the safety and the activation switch.” I saw one of the switches, then took hold of the knife. “Keep it away from heat. If the growths start knuckling together, then it’s probably clogged at the air intake. You can unscrew the cap at the butt of the knife and access the air intake there. Bake it at roughly five hundred degrees to clear it, then thoroughly vacuum. Pay attention to how long it takes the growths to hit maximum length… you’ll know because the colors at the ends are a lighter gray. Three point seven seconds is the optimum time. If it takes shorter then you’ll know something’s wrong with-“ “The knife won’t degrade too much in the next day,” Dragon said. “And we have spares, thanks to Masamune.” “You didn’t make this much of a fuss with my flight pack,” I said. “I included documentation,” Defiant said. “Thank you,” I said. I found the holster for my old knife, then put it through the belt at my back, holstering the new knife. “Where’s the Dragonfly?” he asked. I pointed. Dragon said something in Japanese to Masamune and Black Kaze. There were two nods. Defiant led the way to the Dragonfly, all business, Dragon, Canary, Tattletale, and me following. He seemed almost happy to have something to focus on. A problem that could be solved. Did he genuinely trust me? Was there a modicum of hope, here, with me mobilizing to go look into the Cauldron situation? He continued to hold his weapon, though the fight wasn’t about to start. I could imagine his outlook, the security the weapon afforded him, a hundred solutions in his hands. The ability to defend himself, to defend others, to move out of the way of danger. It made sense. Dragon, conversely… what was her security blanket? Different. I couldn’t put my thumb on it. But she’d lost to Saint, to the Dragonslayers. She’d been taken captive, effectively killed. Killed by a man who saw her as subhuman. She’d been altered by Teacher. Not so much she was a slave to him, but something had happened, and that was no doubt a large part of how she was disconnected from reality in the here and now. I looked back at Saint, Masamune and Black Kaze. Saint was taking a seat, his back to a chunk of destroyed aircraft, cross-legged. Calm, relaxed. “How can you stand to be near them?” I asked. “Keep your enemies closer,” Dragon said, her voice tight. “Don’t forget about the friends part,” I said. She shook her head a little. “I won’t.” “When we were waiting for the fight to start, I went around, looking for people I needed to thank. Important people to me, people who I wasn’t sure I’d get a chance to talk to again. I missed a few important ones. My dad… you two. I know the only reason I got my shot at being a hero, the only reason I didn’t go to jail, was because you vouched for me, because you agreed to cart me back and forth and interrupt your schedule. I probably didn’t even deserve it, but you backed me up. I’m just… I’ve never been good at saying thank you and sounding as sincere as I feel.” “I think we benefited as much as you did,” Dragon said. “You needed to join the Wards to… make amends, shall we say? It was the same for us.” “For me,” Defiant cut in. “I had my own regrets,” Dragon said. “You had no choice.” “Regrets nonetheless,” she said, again. Her head turned towards Canary, and Canary smiled just a little. Dragon then looked to me. Was it possible for an artificial human to look weary? To look wounded, in the sense that she was bearing some grievous injury from recent events? We’d stopped outside the Dragonfly. I bid the ramp to open, controlling the bugs in the operating mechanism. Then, as it opened, I impulsively gave Dragon a hug. Returning a favor she’d given me some time ago. “Let’s get you set up,” Defiant said. “Hook me in while you’re at it?” Tattletale made it a question. “Whatever you need to do, so I can communicate with her and her peeps.” “I’ll see to it.” Tattletale glanced at me. “Ops?” We circled twice before coming in for a landing. A cave just above water level, inaccessible except from the air. The receiving party consisted of Exalt and Revel from the Protectorate core group, with half of the Vegas team. Nix, Leonid, Floret and Spur. Vantage was waving a rod around, listening to steady beeps. “Oh god, finally. Something to take my mind off the beeping,” Floret said. She was petite, her hair in carefully layered waves of pink, with green at the roots. “Find anything?” I asked. “No signs of any portals that have been opened in the past. Harder than cracking Dodger’s gateways, apparently,” Vantage said. “Or they gave us bad instructions. How’re you doing, Weaver?” “I’m fine,” I said. “Wearing black,” he said. “Is everyone going to comment on that?” I asked. “It’s comment worthy. How’d the fight… nevermind. I can guess.” “Probably,” I said. “Grim group,” Floret commented. “I know black’s ‘in’ with the end of the world, but damn. Only one person with style.” I looked over my shoulder. Golem, in silver and gunmetal, his mask solemn. Cuff, again, in a dark metal costume. Imp, with her dark gray mask and black bodysuit that actually fit her. Shadow Stalker, in a black, form-fitting bodysuit like the one I’d given Imp, along with a flowing cloak with a heavy hood. All spidersilk, but the mask was hers, as was the crossbow. Rachel followed, her jacket, tank top and pants black, only the fur ruff at her shoulders, where it flowed around the edges of her hood, was white. Huntress and Bastard flanked her. Lung was still inside the Dragonfly, but I knew he had only his mask and jeans on. Barefoot, shirtless. Canary was the only one, apparently, who met Floret’s standards. Yellow body armor, her helmet in one hand, her hair and feathers free. “I remember you,” Spur said. He smiled. Teeth that had been professionally done, no doubt. He wasn’t bad looking, but not quite my type. Spiky hair, and a costume that mingled barbed wire tattoos with real barbed wire, where his skin was exposed. Mid twenties, with hair bleached to a near-white and acid washed jeans. His mask was simple, black, covering the upper half of his face, with only a circle of barbed wire at the brow. A trademark of thinker powers, to do the whole forehead thing. A precog who was most effective in the midst of chaos and heightened emotions, and fairly competent otherwise. “Bad Canary?” Canary’s eyes widened. “You remember my stage name?” “You were famous,” he said. “The whole trial thing. You-“ Canary’s expression fell. “-got robbed,” he said. “Dick,” Floret said. “Like that’s how she wants to be remembered.” “I remember the music too,” he protested. “Yeah,” Canary said. She rubbed the back of her neck, avoiding eye contact. “It doesn’t matter anyways, does it? Long time ago, and we’ve got better things to worry about.” “Vulgarishous,” he said. “Ur-sound? Lineless?” “You’re probably cheating,” she said. “I could sing the lyrics,” he answered. “It would make me sure you’re cheating. I barely remember the lyrics.” “I don’t believe that for a second,” Spur answered her. “Eh, guys? Back me up. My power doesn’t give me a way to cheat, does it?” “No,” Floret said. “He’s genuine. And none of us have ways to clue him in.” I glanced at Revel, who only rolled her eyes a little. Exalt looked bored. He saw me looking and commented, “It’s fine here. We’re using substandard tools to find a portal that used to exist, and we don’t know exactly where it was.” Imp pushed her mask up until it sat on top of her head. “Finding a transparent needle outside of the haystack.” “Well put,” Leonine said. “Don’t encourage her,” I told him. He only smiled, which made Imp smirk at me in turn. Spur was murmuring the lyrics to the song, and he was actually doing a good job of it. Canary was trying to look like she wasn’t pleased as punch. It was cute. Cute and just a little ominous, considering who these guys were. Some things had come to light after they’d departed their positions in the Protectorate and Wards. Nothing definitive, but it raised questions that had yet to be answered. Questions that would probably never be answered, now that evidence lockers and court records throughout Earth Bet had been obliterated. Problems that had resolved themselves just a little too neatly. People, both bad guys and witnesses, who’d disappeared. “If I’m the lion, and you’re the goat…” Leonine was saying. “I guarantee I’m more dangerous than you,” Imp retorted. I could sense others in the group getting restless. “We’ll let you know if anything turns up,” Revel said, as if she’d sensed it. She smiled a little, a bit awkward, or apologetic. “Don’t let us waste your time. It’s the end of the world, spend it with people you care about.” Her eyes moved to Cuff and Golem, who were hanging back. The pair were the heroes of our group, so to speak. They’d feel the betrayal of the Vegas capes more sharply, even now. They looked at each other. I did too. Not that I counted myself as a hero. But I’d been there. “I could come with,” Exalt said. “If you’re going back. I’m only here to relieve Revel. I’ll be able to participate in the coming fight.” “Sure,” I said. “But I’d like to hear the password. From Revel.” “Good thinking. Belord, six-two, spauld,” she said. “On my seventeenth birthday,” I said. “What color was the cake?” “Seriously?” she asked. “Do you even remember? I should get a brownie point for this one. Because I care about my Wards. It was white.” “The frosting?” I asked. “Blue,” she said, sounding just a bit put out. “And you barely ate any.” I nodded, satisfied. “And… Leonine.” “Me?” Leonine laughed a bit. “What kind of shenanigans do you think we’re pulling?” “He’s one of the Vegas capes,” Imp said, speaking very slowly, like I was mentally disabled. “I know he’s one of the Vegas capes. But I think I have to cover all of the bases. Who was your kindergarten teacher?” “You researched that?” Spur asked. “Dug through our entire histories to find something obscure?” He sounded offended. Every head had turned his way. “Do you have a problem with that?” I asked. He frowned, but he shook his head, sticking his hands in his pockets as he leaned against the wall beside Canary. “No. No problem.” “Richie,” Leonine said. “Mrs. Richie.” “Great,” I said. “Great. Now let’s drop the fucking act.” “I gave you the answer you wanted,” Leonine said, smirking. “What the fuck?” “Spur?” I said, “Raise your right hand?” He did. There were bugs on the fingers. “He was moving his hand. A one-handed sign language. I assume everyone on your team knows it.” “I was thinking of Canary’s music,” Spur told me. He stepped forward, putting a hand on Canary’s shoulder as he did so. She turned, so they were both facing me. “Piano keys. Mnemonic tool. That is something our team uses.” “You’re being a little crazy paranoid,” Imp said. “Just a little.” “They’ve been playing us since the start,” I said. “The men were batting their eyelashes at you and Canary, probably the targets they thought they could work. Revel… I’d think she’s under some kind of compulsion.” “A lot crazy,” Imp said. “Way crazy.” “Maybe Tattletale can chime in,” I suggested. “Tattle?” “Mostly right. Exalt, Revel, Vantage, Leonine, Floret, all fakes.” “No shit,” Imp said. Her mouth dropped open. “No way.” “Jig’s up,” I said. “We know.” One by one, the Vegas capes changed. Flesh altered, and they assumed identical appearances. Six copies of Satyrical. Leaving only Spur and Nix. One of the Satyricals looked at the two who remained. “Take care of yourself. I’ll see you shortly.” “I know,” Spur said. Satyr looked at us, as if taking us all in. “And you, I suppose, we’ll run into. Sooner or later.” Then the Satyrs died. Flesh withered, and the Satyrs crumpled up. They made bloody messes as they hit the ground, like overripe tomatoes might, but with teeth and the occasional bit of withered organ. Self duplication, and each duplicate had shapeshifting abilities. I bent down and picked up the devices from the heads of Revel, Exalt and Vantage’s clones. Earbuds, phones… “Revel,” Cuff said, her voice small. “Where are the real ones?” Golem asked. “With the real Satyr,” I guessed. “And how did he know the passwords?” Golem asked. “He guessed the cake thing through cold reading. White with blue, like Weaver’s costume. Made sense. That Taylor didn’t eat much… well, look at her. The rest… torture? Coercion through other means?” “Torture?” I asked. Spur raised his chin a bit, but didn’t do or say anything to suggest otherwise. “Ew.” Imp said, under her breath, “Ew, ew, ew. He’s like, forty? And he was hitting on me.” “Where’s the portal?” I asked Spur, ignoring Imp. “No portal. Or weren’t you paying attention?” I looked at Nix. “You know where this goes, if you don’t cooperate. Circumstances are a little too dire. We knock you out, your power fades. So why don’t you drop the illusion and let us see the portal?” “My power stays up while I’m out,” she said. I drew my knife. The one that wasn’t special. “Woah,” Golem said. He put his hand on my wrist. “Woah, woah, woah.” “She’s bluffing,” Spur said, unfazed. “She’s scary, she’s got a reputation, but she’s bluffing here. There’s no way she follows through.” “I think you’re badly underestimating how pissed off I am,” I said. I was surprised at just how right I was. The mounting anger caught me off guard. “Doing this, screwing around, stabbing people in the back, screwing with the system when we’re trying to save humanity?” “We’re saving it too,” Spur said. “Satyr, the others, they’ve got this situation handled. Give them… two or three more hours, and the threats are going to be dealt with, Cauldron will be secure, or as secure as they can be, after you account for injuries and deaths at the hands of the invading group. You go in there, you’re just going to muck up a delicate exfiltration operation.” “Invading?” Golem asked. “The deviants. The case-fifty-threes. Weld’s group.” Weld? No. He’d been one of the only decent ones out there, during my stay in Brockton Bay. Respectable, honest, kind. He’d saluted me the first time we’d crossed paths, because we were both going up against an Endbringer. Fuck it all. Either Spur was fucking with me, or things were fucked. Fuck it all. “People like you are the reason we deserve to lose,” I said, gripping the knife. “Every step of the way, it’s been people refusing to cooperate, refusing to talk plain truth. From day one, even. You’re the reason humanity deserves to get wiped out.” “Great,” he said. “You’re still not going to use that knife on either of us.” It was said with the smug tone of someone who could see the future. I glanced at Canary. I could see the hurt on her face. “I get it,” Spur said. “See it coming. If it helps, I do remember the music.” Rachel stepped forward, giving me a little push to get me out of the way, and then slugged him. He dropped, unconscious. Golem set about binding him to the cave floor with hands of stone. I looked at Nix. “Her too.” Golem reached into his costume, and hands of stone gripped Nix. “To the ceiling,” I decided, at the last second. “Sure,” Golem said. Hands of stone emerged, passing Nix up. She struggled a bit, but she was at an unsafe height by the time she realized what he was doing. She was bound to the cave ceiling with armholds, leg holds and an arm set across her collarbone. “What the hell?” she asked. “I don’t think any of your friends have powers that can break those hands,” I said. “The hell?” she asked, again. She tested her bonds. “The fuck?” “You better hope we make it out okay,” I said. “Tattletale?” “Pretty sure it’s to your left. Start by going ten paces that way.” We followed the directions. The illusion broke, dissolving into harmless smoke, as we reached it and pressed hard enough against the wall in question. With the barrier gone, I could feel the warm air from within, see a dark hallway without lights. I looked at my teammates. Maybe humanity deserves to lose, but these guys are why we’re going to win, I promised myself. This entry was posted in 29.03 and tagged Bastard, Bitch, Bonesaw, Canary, Cuff, Defiant, Dragon, Foil, Glaistig Uaine, Imp, Legend, Lung, Nilbog, Parian, Shadow Stalker, Tattletale, Taylor, Theo, Vista, Weld by wildbow. Bookmark the permalink. No real commentary. Still sick. Writing the chapters leading up to the end is 10x harder than the chapters were in the middle. Hope it’s enjoyable. Votes on topwebfiction are appreciated. Also, this can serve as the typo thread. Jen on September 24, 2013 at 00:17 said: Dragonfly said something in Japanese to Masamune and Black Kaze. There were two nods. I’m assuming that it was Dragon, not the ship, that spoke to the capes? Yes. Already fixed. Thank you. Jeremy on September 24, 2013 at 00:20 said: Quite nice, Wildbow! Long time reader, first time poster, and I have to say that the quality of your writing throughout Worm has been nothing short of impeccable. Keep it up, and I hope you feel better soon. Always nice to hear from the long time lurkers. Glad you’ve enjoyed thus far. I’ll try to keep it up to the end. Only a (relative) bit to go. PapaGoose on September 24, 2013 at 13:15 said: New to your story – found it via Reddit a week ago. Outstanding job, especially for a serial and especially at the grueling pace you’ve set for yourself. Already sharing with friends and others. In fact, you’ve inspired me to attempt something similar with a story I’m working on for NaNoWriMo this year. Keep the faith in yourself – you’re on the home stretch! So it seems PapaGoose has taken a gander at our story and has commented to get Wildbow’s attention. Well, what’s good for the goose is good for the gecko. This story’s for the birds, but whoever thinks it was an ugly duckling will soon be eating crow. People are practically raven with praise for this story. But people’s lack of attention to the comments section is robin them of potential enjoyment. We all come together down here and meld our various thoughts into a mixing pot of fandom, our speech taking on the characteristics of a sort of fandom pigeon language. Don’t worry too hard, you won’t need to crane your neck read down here. The comments are, in stork contrast to the story above, much lighter. Your goose is cooked if you thought you were getting away without a welcome. So welcome, PapaGoose, to the comments section. Hah! Seems we’re all birds of a feather, perhaps related by prehistoric ancestor. A gecko’s welcome with open webbed feet is appreciated and enjoyed. You have the gracious thanks of a silly goose. Poor Jeremy, you identified yourself as a 1st time poster, expect a visit from a crazy lizard soon. Jeremy Jeremy Jeremy Jeremy, hiya Jeremy licks his cheek Mmm, tastes nonalcoholic. I’ll have a virgin commenter, barkeep! Send it out with the drink wench along with a bowl of your salty nuts. Don’t worry, I’m sure Wildbow can handle this little illness. Not like further south on the continent where if you get sick they have a horse with a broken leg take you out back and shoot you. Now that you’re caught up and commenting, feel free to peruse the comments for your inter-update enjoyment. At this point, there’s been a lot of shipping, so feel free to mess with that all you like. Personally, I’m shipping Satyrical with the Protomen. That’s a band, by the way. Had to come up with a large group of people at one time, since Satyrical ought to be called the human orgy. It would go great for his comic book name. “Human Orgy #69: The Terrible Attack of the Tongue Twister!” Either way, settle right down with us here, pardner, and enjoy yourself while you waste away the hours till doomsday, aka the end of the story. The end is Nye. Bill Nye. The Science Guy. Bill Bill Bill Bill Bill Bill Bill Bill! And now, Jeremy, welcome to the comments section. Yum, a virgin commenter sounds wonderful… I wonder what that would taste like? A little bit on the nose, with a rich idealistic flavor and hints of situational narcissism made manifest through the desire to have oneself known to the microcosmic world that is this comments page. The finish is one of triumph: overcoming social boundaries can do that to a person. All in all, you seem like a trustworthy person to sit down and have a drink with, Mr. Gecko. I will toast with you to the end of the world. That may only bring the end of the world even closer to fruition. Or is that more of a de-fruitioning. A decommissioning de-fruitioning? Either way, better be air conditioning. Satyrical’s one of the few people who can sleep with several people at the same time in different locations. Decentralised orgy. Very efficient… Satyrical: The Human Whorehouse Naeddyr on September 24, 2013 at 01:16 said: >“You have a question, or questions,” Legend said, “But you’re not asking them because you’re worried about the response. Either it’s something touchy, or there’s another reason why you’re holding back.” >“If you don’t know, then I can’t >“So this is about something only I would know?” UPOTN on September 24, 2013 at 01:49 said: Rachel folllowed, her jacket, tank top and pants An extra l in followed. “If you don’t know, then I can’t Missing a quotation mark. Thanks. Fixed both. Don on September 24, 2013 at 01:56 said: I have to disagree with Jeremy: I thought this chapter badly needed tightening up. It’s saveable, and doesn’t need to be scrapped, but it does need editing that goes deeper than just typos. The problem is pacing, mostly – the dialog goes beyond briskness and brevity (which is normally good) to choppy and somewhat incomplete. As an example, where you write: It’s unclear that you are no longer describing Chevalier, but Defiant. And it’s more than just labeling; there’s absolutely no transition between people at all, so just putting in “Defiant reached out of his…” instead of ‘He reached’ would still be jarring and feel wrong. It needs more exposition. In fact, pretty much everything up until the Vegas capes scene needs a sprinkling of exposition feathered into it. Not much; a word, here and there, to acknowledge a change of focus or a needed context. Brevity and brisk dialog, as I said before, is good; and I wouldn’t want you to lose that. But this chapter cuts too close to the bone, detail-wise. The good news is, around the time of the Vegas capes you hit your stride, and the story flows pretty well again. Eh. Pretty fair. Like I said, I’m sick, my focus isn’t all there. It’s believable that I got a bit sloppy on that front. I remember you saying how different states affected your writing – when you were sleepy, or stressed out, etc., had dramatically different effects on your writing… and how you’d use that sometimes. I’m trying to figure out how you’d use ‘sick=choppy writing’… Since choppy isn’t always a bad thing, if it’s what you’re going for… but then you’d have to induce sickness… and would you even know your style had changed until you went back and you read it while healthy? … also, who the hell would want to catch the flu for a writing style? Talk about sacrificing for your art… Anyway. Thought you’d be amused by that train of thought, so I shared it. Your stamina and dedication continues to amaze me. alexanderthesoso on September 24, 2013 at 03:14 said: very enjoyable! thank you. I felt it was good. You’ll probably want to go back and give it a revision at some point, but it wasn’t wrong. I think in some ways choppy works. Everyones state of mind is kinda tired and dishartened. will408914 on September 24, 2013 at 12:45 said: Isn’t Nix supposed to be Nyx? And isn’t her gas poisonous? Or is this a different cape? wildbow confirms later on this page that yes, they are two separate capes and that yes, there is a “story” behind that. >I gave Rachel a little nod of acknowledgement as we stepped outside. >Then we stepped outside. Seems a bit redundant… He reached out of his pocket and withdrew a knife. –> into his pocket? Also, I’d clarify that it’s Defiant speaking. And was the previous question (“what else”) also him? Defiant led the way to the Dragonfly, all business, Dragon, Canary, Tattletale, and me following. –> …Dragonfly, all business, with Dragon, Canary… Tyrone on December 21, 2013 at 16:52 said: Leonine is called Leonid once. chair on September 11, 2014 at 22:29 said: Except he’s indiscriminate. He’s killing the ones who can actually affect him, because he’s being reactive. – Contradictory statement, maybe missing a “not” before indiscriminate. “I am genuinely curious what you’re doing, Weaver.” -Missing word? Harder than cracking Dodger’s gateways, apparently, -Should be Dodge, if referring to that tinker from Toybox. I’ve seen it mentioned already but since those were a bit old I’ll throw up the knife one again with the grammar issue. “He reached out of his pocket and withdrew a knife.” This section coming just after Chevalier was talking causes the “he” to refer to Chev when the next paragraph makes it clear Defiant is the one offering the knife. I’d just swap in “Defiant” in place of “He”. CoB on January 22, 2016 at 21:58 said: Not a typo, but character tags missing for Satyrical, Spur and Nix. Those three also not detailed on the “Cast (In Depth)” page. VpShiomi on July 20, 2016 at 13:39 said: Am I the only person that prefers Saint over Dragon and believes Dragon and Armsmaster should be eradicated? irrevenant on July 20, 2016 at 16:20 said: You’re not alone, but you’re in the minority. Personally I’m somewhere in the middle. I don’t have the loathing for Saint that some people do. I can see how, from his point of view he could rationalise his choice. But he also seemed to have made it in significant part because it made him feel important. Even based on the limited intel he had available it was a questionable call. Yes, Dragon had the potential to become an S-class threat. But you have to look at the world around them. In a world full of S-class threats, Dragon is the only one who has been on our side the whole time. Even not knowing what a good person Dragon actually is, throwing that away on a chance she might turn bad was a bad decision. That was very well put. I can certainly relate to Saint, if I was in his position I might have very well done the same and honestly it was Armsmasters actions that lead them all to this place. storryeater on July 21, 2016 at 08:19 said: There are people who believe Saint’s mistake was logical and reasonable, and even the best choice given what he knew. But, knowing what the readers knew, everyone agrees it was wrong. There are people who still hate Defiant cuz they can’t think about stuff like redemption and amends, and think a character is unchanging. But they still like Dragon. You are the only person I have seen who wants Dragon, the most unambiguously benign being in the story, eradicated. Nourjan on July 21, 2016 at 17:21 said: Saint’s mistake was logical and understandable considering his limited knowledge of the situation.Remember , even Taylor had the wrong impression of Dragon at some point.Characters in fiction can be excused for not having the same information readers/audience does. Saint deserves as much chance at redemption as Armaster did.The only person in this story that doesn’t deserve that are the complete mnsters (Jack Slash eg). Look, I didn’t disagree with that, I never made clear what I believed. I clarify it when I do and, frankly, its irrrelevant to the discussion All I m saying is, Saint did, at best, a mistake from a Greek tragedy, like Oedipus banging his mom: it was understandable, excusable by today’s ethics, and didn’t make him a villain, but still, due to tragic ignorance, he tortured and attacked to kill an inocent paragon of justice. Yes, his lack of knowlege may justify and excuse his actions, but it does not justify any reader of the story for wanting Dragon, of all people, eradicated. I think you’re confusing two different things. I don’t want Dragon gone cause saint is being mistreated. I want her gone cause her very existence is a mockery of mankind and frankly a threat. She is not bound by a life span, how long till she decides man kind can’t be trusted with governing themselves. How long before her actins start being cruel and unreasonable. “I think mankind should be gone- how long before it destroys its environment, how long before it creates a dystopia where no one has rights.” Your way of thinking is a fallacy, you think that, just because a being is significantly more powerful than others, it will inevitably become a monstrous villain. Such way of thinking leads you… to want the greatest force of good in Worm eradicated. Because fear.Not even fear of the unknown, fear of the POTENTIAL. Racists behave more logical than that. Why don’t we kill every potential murderer then? Heck, if power is the problem, we should kill every world leader after a couple of years. That’d make it harder for them to turn corrupt. OOr perhaps we sould kill every potential murderer. Lets just kill everyone who has a trigger event- we may get another Nilbog. You do understand these thoughts are nothing more than humanity’s self loathing (we suck, any logical being would find us uselless and//or cruel) and desire to be on top , don’t you? Both bad things to have? the reason we can’t have nice things? the reason we cannot co-operate so that we all may live well? I’d rather live a slave under Dragon than fall prey to such all destructive way of thinking. You’re argument falls into the category of Straw Man fallacy. You are missing the most important point. Why do we not kill all murders? Because they are human. My problem is not with her power, that just makes everything worse. The issue is that she, just like Scion, is not human. I am human and I place us on a pedestal. If you had read my comment properly and not just jumped to conclusion you would have known that. “her very existence is a mockery of mankind ” So how did you take that and jump to potential murders being killed or heads of state being dangerous. What I am saying is closer to putting an animal down because it is a threat. It’s to draw a line and say that something, which is not human does not need to be extended the same level of protection or forgiveness. Now you could have argued that it is similar to racism in so far that other races were seen as subhuman in the USA aka Slavery and elsewhere. That is a much finer point since I have grouped all of mankind as one. It would require to either bend my inclusive view of mankind as a whole or try expanding it to include human like constructs such as Dragon. And as to your last point “I’d rather live a slave under Dragon than fall prey to such all destructive way of thinking.” Maybe you should go find a master cause a person willing to compromise to that extend might as well live in a society complete controlled by the state for a nebulous goal of order and security. As humans such a way of living would not only be shameful, it would also be meaningless. True peace requires free cooperation, not some forced participation. A world under Dragon is no better than living in the Matrix, haha. I hope this clarified my prior statements and that you do not get caught up in your feelings for a character you happened to like. I think the difference is that you’re thinking in terms of human beings whereas I would think in terms of people. So far all the people we know have been human beings but that needn’t always be the case. I would say that any being that thinks and feels at a human level (or higher) and has a personality is a person. Otherwise you’re saying the reason we deserve rights is not as a result of our nature but as a result of having a specific biology. If you accept that the reason we have certain rights is due to our nature as thinking, feeling, civilised beings then you have to logically extend those rights to other thinking, feeling, civilised beings. 1) Speciesist, technically, but this kind of entitlement of humanity is part of what makes it destructive. 2)what I am saying is not “I like to be a slave” , but “I rathger suffer injustice than commit it” , in other words, I’d rather suffer the consequences of NOT eradicating every innocent AI that wants to help, rather than securing my safety and freedom. Xenophobic rhetoric like that is similar to what fascists used 3) she is neither mockery nor animal, and she did NOTHING to deserve being put out , other than exist. I am not caught in a my feelings of a character, I just do not want the imperium of man to come if we evven discover other sapient life. slider214 on July 24, 2016 at 00:06 said: While I think storryeater and irrevenant put it far better than I could I’d just like to add one thing. You say that your attitude could be compared to racism. That’s the wrong word. Your attitude is far more similar to xenophobia. You aren’t biased you are expressing a straight up hatred and fear of something outside a self-defined ‘group’ of ‘humanity’. We justify putting down animals because it’s generally accepted that most animals aren’t sapient. While creatures such as chimpanzees and elephants blur the line it’s still somewhat murky since they can’t really communicate with us. Dragon on the other hand CAN communicate. So well that the amount of people who suspected her of being artificial at the start of the story could be counted on one hand. It is almost impossible to argue that Dragon isn’t sapient. Which means that you are advocating removing the rights of a sapient being and murdering them because you are scared to death of her. It’s not akin to killing a dog. It’s akin to saying an alien asked for a cup of tea and you shot it in the head because it has a ship that can travel through space and that scared you. The Vegas capes are kind of assholes. Still it is pretty interesting to see how a group of mostly thinker/stranger capes operates. We all have strange thoughts 😉 Do horses ever feel like trying out missionary style? Missionary of what religion? Thats the question. Bebop on September 24, 2013 at 06:42 said: Neigh-storianism. endgame on September 24, 2013 at 09:36 said: Is that related to string theory in any way? According to Gordon Freemen, those guys are cultists. Hexa on March 16, 2017 at 09:30 said: A bit like the Undersiders maybe? Well, they were mostly Masters, but I imagine the psychological effects could be similar. Similarly incomprehensible to outsiders, anyway. Althalus on September 24, 2013 at 00:20 said: Kind of a pity that she didn’t turn to Lung to have him confirm just how justified her reputation regarding using knives to do nasty things to people is. Probably didn’t want to pull the tail of a dragon. All things considered, it’s probably best she doesn’t antagonize him. It would have made for great drama though. Lung isn’t with her, is he? AFAIK, she only took capes of minimal use directly fighting Scion. That would not include Lung… lung is shirtless in the dragonfly. he is useless against zion because he used up his one giant charge of transformation and any future transformations would take longer than the duration if a zion fight. Satyr’s power… is eerily reminiscent of Echidna + Oliver. (Or whoever the shapeshifter from the Travelers was called). Was he a Cauldron cape or a normal trigger? Funny that you mention that. Ask Pandamonius (sp?) Ivy for the details I provided her on the Division formula (the results of seven previous test cases). Oh how cruel it is to sit on what I imagine to be piles of background information. Literal piles, meticulously handwritten with a slight flourish. Sealed away in heavy iron filing cabinets by your spiteful hand! Do you remember what chapter that was? (Tall order, I know, but I’m not sure how to contact her unless she shows up on this thread or another one here). Also, would you be willing to answer my question on how you would “film” a trigger event, should the stars align to get you a TV deal or something? It was in IRC. …Is there a handydandy link to that? nvm, Just saw his response. And I am still interested in how you would translate a trigger vision to a visual medium. By… showing the fragmented scenes? CGI or drawing? I’m not sure what you’re asking for. Pandemonious Ivy on September 24, 2013 at 00:38 said: Make the audience take acid. Sort of like “what would the storyboards look like?” Like how you made the script for Gestation 1.1 last time, but applied to a trigger event. Well, the trigger event is a visual effect in-universe, so making it a visual effect in a real world visual medium really wouldn’t be that hard with modern CGI. But that’s too simple. I think you are asking for something else, but I can’t see what. Pandemonious* Ivy and him* You turdbutt. Vials titles are generally shotgun-esque in application. The general premise is the same, but the nuances can vary in minor or major ways. Echidna, Satyr, or a person who can shapeshift in proximity to others can all come from the same Cauldron vial: Division, in this instance. Damn, was hoping to get a bunch of people eventually making their way over to IRC only to ask where Miss Pandemonious was. I meant the actual list of powers the Division vial produced for the test cases. I’m too lazy to figure out where I put it. Was hoping you copied it into a file like you did everything else I said. Oh yeah, I did copy it. If they come to irc, I will post it at some point, I’m sure. Only if they ask for Master Panda, Lord of All He Surveys. Could someone point me to the IRC i only just started reading the other day and have no idea where it is. Find an irc chat function (mibbit.com is easily accessable) then the server is darklordpotter.net and the chatroom is #parahumans randomsoul2 on September 24, 2013 at 00:59 said: Are there any particular rules about joining this chatroom? Which network are we looking for? Because “parahumans” in the channel search box at mibbit returns 0 results, and Darklordpotter doesn’t show up in the network list. Not entirely sure what you’re using. Nor how to assist you. Server: darklordpotter. Chatroom: #parahumans. Other than that, I recommend a liberal use of magic and pixie dust. I found that I had to disable the ssl option to connect, you may want to try the same. I keep reading in the comments to avoid mibbit. Something to do with the way it works making it hard to block individuals so some channels just outright block mibbit? Can someone confirm or deny that, please? WTH, you’re Panda? Why do you all have different names on IRC? -.- Sage and ‘pelt are the only one with synchronized nicks That’s a negative, Ghostrider. Says the guy with a two letter screen-name -_- “Division” sounds like duplication powers a la Oni Lee, Satyr, and, um, that one guy who could make copies of himself that repeat a specific motion, IMO, although this is of course guesswork. But it sounds like that’s one of many possible powers granted by Division. Which I suppose makes sense: I seem to recall the “Deus” vial producing both Siberian and Genesis? I think that was Chronicler. Willy (@Willy591) on September 24, 2013 at 00:25 said: Awesome chapter. A nice mix of old!Worm and new!Worm in tone. Ye Olde Typo Thread. Be puttin’ yer discoveries here! “You’re strong when it comes to improvising,” Chevalier old me. Missing a ‘T’. Pause this endeavor, for a moment, to note that Wildbow has claimed title to the typo thread above. Though I’m digging the pirate theme you’ve got going on. JN on September 24, 2013 at 02:36 said: Makes me want to go back and reread just to see if I can find a word that’s missing an ‘arrrrr’. “He was, but he tends towards radio silence, Pretender’s people have since well before the Vegas teams cut ties with the Protectorate.” The comma should be either a semicolon or a period. “It’s comment worthy.” “comment worthy” should have a hyphen instead of a space. I Google searched “site: parahumans.wordpress.com “early bird””. This told me that no one has ever commented on the blog “the early bird gets the Worm”. Really. I’m sure someone has on some other fansite, but wow. Low hanging puns people. Well, it would be, but in this case, the worm has this nasty habit of wriggling out of the early bird’s grasp. Over, and over, and over again. I have in fact seen this pun used in the comments. No doubt in my mind. And Google has failed me often enough, especially in recent years, that I no longer believe in its omniscience (I used to do SEO work on occasion, so I know a few things about Google – take it for what it’s worth). I’m not going to try to dig through the comments for it, but I KNOW there’s a variation on that pun in there somewhere. I remember being unamused by it. I lied – I DID dig through the comments to find it. https://parahumans.wordpress.com/2012/07/07/plague-12-4/ Search for ‘early’ on the page. You’ll find it. It is, of course, Psycho Gecko who does the dirty deed. Sigh. You know I do them dirt cheap, baby. Hmm, so you’re implying that the Scion entity has a vulnerability to Aidan? Seems legit… Only if Aidan is early. A pity he only triggered relatively recently, and might well be dead… you know, late… “Get out of my head, puns!” Ascaloth on September 24, 2013 at 00:32 said: Come to think of it, the survivors STILL aren’t throwing everything they have at Scion, are they? I mean c’mon, they have Bonesaw. No clone army to replace the losses? Bonesaw isn’t equipped to make clones. They take some time to grow, anyways. Years to fully develop. Months to reach adolescence. Okay, but all she really needs to do is to recreate Echidna, or an analogue. Just tossing out random ideas, mind. flame7926 on September 24, 2013 at 00:38 said: What about that Smurf clone that was baby sized after a few hours? Shouldn’t there be a way to accelerate the development process that turns them into robots with simple brains? Sure, but that’s Blasto’s balliwick, not Bonesaw’s. How about putting Bonesaw in Simurgh’s area of influence, and see what SHE comes up with? There can only be one rational response to that: AIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!! Don’t forget the irrational response to that: Wheeeee! I’m making blood angels! wkz on September 24, 2013 at 04:09 said: Given that Bonesaw just hurried by Legend + Taylor, and the Simurgh is in the area, this might already be IN PROGRESS. <..> Wheeeee! Let’s make blood angels! My thoughts exactly. Also, why did no one ever point out that Simurgh is not spelled Smiurgh? To clarify: The thought of Simurgh using Bonesaw’s power, not the blood angels thought. I THOUGHT that typo was oddly consistent in your posts! I assumed some sort of autocorrect malfunction, but you thought that was its actual spelling?! 🙂 Sorry, I’m finding this more hilarious than it probably should be. Well, now you know! Well, don’t we have a handy-dandy Endbringer with time distortion powers? Not that there won’t be other issues involved, but simple passage of time requirements to develop things that can be handled within the scope of a time acceleration bubble… Like fixing Dragon’s code, or hospital healing. After someone is healed, put them in stasis. Put a couple capes in the time bubbles that can force grow vegetables and add Taylor to control insects for pollination and for protein. I’d bet that Panacea could turn a bunch of insects into a hamburger patty that was real beef, if she wanted to 🙂 Aname on September 24, 2013 at 11:24 said: Isn’t Khonsu currently in Cauldron’s control? Or was he with Teacher? Either way, I don’t think that’s currently an option. Is Khonsu capable of that much precision? Cephalo the Pod on September 24, 2013 at 16:52 said: Khonsu was sold to Cauldron by Teacher. He’s probably inoperable at the moment, just like the rest of Cauldron. In fact, I bet that sort of advantage is exactly why Wildbow DIDN’T give Khonsu to Taylor and the heroes. Actually, since Scion can break through time fields, imagine they put all their Tinkers in a bubble to get a few years of preparation in a few hours: then Scion flies in and kills them all while they’re sealed inside. This might not happen, of course, and I think it would be worth a try. I imagine the reason they don’t is mostly trying to explain it to Khonsu. Hm…whatever happened to Blasto, anyways? Hehad an heart attack after being forced to dance on the tune of some children show’s theme song all day and night. Oh. He probably didn’t get collected by Glaistig, then. Hasn’t the guy been forced to do enough by childlike killers? I was actually imagining nothing more than him manifesting by Simurgh and going from there. packsmack on September 24, 2013 at 00:33 said: Is it bad if I was hoping taylor would stab him when he was knocked out? Nah, that just makes you human. I was hoping she would castrate him while he was awake. I was hoping she’d stab him while he was awake. I know I hate being told I won’t do something. I’m also glad she called them out on all the secrecy and refusal to really work together, saying that people like them are why they deserve to lose. Took the words right out of my mouth. Last time I eat a lollipop with a cricket in it. Axel on September 24, 2013 at 03:53 said: Put enough Pressure on Taylor and she’s do something similar for “good reasons” Last time I saw her refuse to engage in teamwork was because the group in question refused to engage in teamwork and broke the truce. All this time, that same truce hasn’t been enforced because of people claiming that, despite people taking advantage of it, they needed those other people. Besides, we have no reason to believe that Cauldron has any good reasons for anything they do. They built themselves up as the guys to stop Scion and now their asses are going to be forcibly pulled out of the fire by Taylor. If they’d been a bit more open, none of this would have happened, but they felt so sure in their own “superior” handling of the situation, felt they deserved to be set on a pedestal as the shady world saviors who did what had to be done to remain secret while failing to actually save the world, that they withheld information and skills from the world that could have saved millions, possibly billions of lives. I’d damn sure trust Taylor’s good reasons than any claimed good reasons of Cauldron or the Yangban or any of these other fuckers who make careers out of failing. Maybe, but I still think that given enough time and situations,Taylor would eventually end up no different then Alexandria, believing that all the evil she does would be for good reasons. Nah, none of the evils that Taylor has done has come to bite her in the ass yet… the Dinah/Coil thing has already happened the only matter left hanging is the Shooting Aster while still working with Theo thing. Cauldron’s greatest weakness seems to be that every single one of their actions creates more problems down the line that will screw up thier capability to achieve their end goal and their backup plans do the exact same thing. So basically, if Cauldron does it, it’s bad. But if Taylor does it, that makes it ok? We have yet to see Taylor take part in a massive conspiracy to kidnap, torture, conduct illegal human testing, or even leave huge numbers of capes to die on a platform when she could evacuate them all easily. She also wasn’t responsible for the creation of Siberian, Gray Boy, or other powerful villains who kill people. Cauldron is a secret organization, accountable to nobody, that uses terror and assassination to control others, with immense resources funded at least initially by the drug trade (see Lung interlude) Taylor is a team player, who acts mostly in the open, and takes responsibility for what she does. She can be very brutal but her brutality is pragmatic brutality in almost every case. I’m not even sure where you can really begin to make a valid comparison, other than they both sometimes kill their enemies. If all you do to fight evil is just commit more evil, then how does anything really change? You just end up exchanging one for another. You’ll have to ask Cauldron that, since it’s one of the main differences between them and Taylor. She isn’t evil. One of the ways you can tell is because Cauldron feels no conflict over their actions. Dr. Mother has no conscience eating away at her because she did bad things, even for good reasons. She doesn’t give a shit how many people she kills or maims to justify her goals. Taylor is constantly guilt-ridden over choices she had to take or ways she had to act to get her point across or even perfectly justifiable and moral actions that nonetheless hurt someone. She has that eating away at her, weighing her down, and informing her later decisions. It’s kind of like an analysis I once read of that movie where a woman can only pick one of her kids. Even though she had no choice but to have one die, she agonizes over it until the day of her death, and it was right that she did so because she was a good person. An evil person wouldn’t have been that torn up about it. Nourjan on September 24, 2013 at 06:31 said: People keep bringing the oil rig incident.That was the one of the times Cauldron’s action was completely justified.Opening a door there would effectively allow Scion to wipe all possible resistance in one swoop.Ironically the only reason why Taylor and the rest of the platform survivor are still alive was because Cauldron reuse too open that door when Scion appeared. @ Gecko But even if she’s guilt ridden, she still continues to do these actions, and whats worse is she does worse and worse things progressively. One compromise ends up leading to another. Batman said it best: “Then it will happen this way: You make the kill, but your pain doesn’t die with Harvey, it grows. So you run out into the night to find another face, and another, and another, until one terrible morning you wake up and realize that revenge has become your whole life. And you won’t know why. “ @Psycho Gecko BTW, what movie was that?I remember similar thing happened in the “Joy Luck Club”(never watched the movie,read the book). I believe they were talking about Sophie’s Choice. As to Cauldron: I refuse to condemn them yet, because there is still a possibility that they do, in fact, know what they’re doing. If I were a judge from Earth Bet putting Cauldron on trial for their actions somehow, I’d call them Guilty, but we don’t have access to courtroom levels of evidence here (or even “Guy who came to fix the coffee machine in Cauldron’s base before they relocated offworld” levels of knowledge), so I can’t do that. It doesn’t look promising, though… I cannot remember a time when Taylor betrayed anyone. Some of her actions have been VERY dark-side but I cannot recall any betrayals. The other Indian cape when she was talking to Mr. Portal Gun in India might count, arguably. I didn’t remember that. I still don’t remember it actually. Do you remember the indian cape’s name so I can search for it? It was Particulate Ah found it. Yes, you could say that Weaver betrayed Particulate, but that would be a stretch. Betrayal is normally only talked about when there is trust involved, and in the short time they worked together, with no common language, and with him having used his weapons without her direction twice even though she was leading, I don’t see a whole lot of trust there. She apparently tried to use Particulate’s assassination attempt to gain some favor with Phir Sē, but he saw through it. And? What makes you sure she won’t do something similar down the lines? This whole story has been about how other people’s wrong for right reasons like Cauldron are evil and not to be trusted, yet Taylor does such things all the time and that makes her trustworthy? Probably because nobody’s greased the sides of Mt. Everest enough to justify such a slippery slope argument. Oh, there’s plenty of room for Taylor to make more grey area decisions. I strongly suspect that Taylor’s going to get an opportunity to demonstrate this in the next couple episodes, since she’s now leading a team again. That’s the thing though. Taylor stays in the grey areas, she rarely touches the really dark places, but she isn’t really attracted to the light either. When she encounters someone who has gone off the deep end into darkness, she doesn’t do mercy. When she feels someone’s situation is so bad that killing them IS a mercy, then she does do mercy. Aster. Questionable at best. So basically what you’re saying is, Taylor is above the law and can do what ever she wishes as long as she claims to have good intentions. And if anyone disagrees with her, she responds with intimidation, threats and fear: Because she’s apparently always right about how the world should be run,a young girl (despite having superpowers) somehow knows more then thousands of years of debates on ethics and proper leadership. So basically, she’s become a bully herself. It’s not that surprising really, it’s been proven statistically that many teens who were bullied end up bullies themselves. In the end, it’s like Taylor said way back when :There are no simple solutions” but that DOESN’T mean her solutions are any less simple and doesn’t deserve to be called out for the hypocrisy that it is. She’s not making the world a better place, she’s only proving that might makes right and that only those who have power have the right to rule and do what ever they want. Hrm, you do understand that currently, in the Worm universe, might does in fact make right? Aver since the S9 clone episode that’s been made pretty brutally clear. You can still have morality and live in a might makes right society – if you have the might to maintain that society. Wildbow hasn’t made the world feel as much like a post-apocalyptic environment as it should be, I think. The concentration has been on the characters, not the world in general. Taylor is trying to preserve the one law that matters for humanity right now, the pact that all capes will work together to fight the greatest threats. Other laws are meaningless in the face of the end of the world. ” For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? ” In this chapter, Taylor argues that Cauldron’s current actions make humanity deserve to die. But how is that different from her in spirit? It doesn’t matter if you’re morally right, that doesn’t give you the right to force your beliefs on others and then use it to make the ends justify the means. I’m not asking whether or not her choices are right, I’m asking what gives her the RIGHT to decide what’s right or wrong? And yet, people use their own morality to justify the use of force all the time. They’re called laws. Laws that murder, laws that destroy lives, laws that protect and laws that save lives – sometimes all at the same time. What gives Taylor the power to dictate right and wrong? The same thing that gives Chevalier, or Weld, Cauldron, or the US government that power: The people who listen, for whatever reason. @Axel: It’s not a matter of bad things being ok when Taylor does them, its a matter of effectiveness & efficiency. Taylor has achieved usable functional results with what power and resources she has but Cauldron with all their power and resources only creates more problems that creates more problems and so on and so fourth thus res ipsa loquitur its less a matter of right and wrong and more a matter who screws up next to last and takes down less innocent bystanders with them. Also as I have said before, the ends justify the means only when your means do not betray everything your end stands for; Taylor has realised this and therefore has quit being a hero because she realises what she really wants and that it cannot be done with that for a title. Cauldron claims to do what they do to ensure Humanity’s survival but has yet to realise that their means and methods has only sacrificed what Humanity should stand for; they have sacrificed their heart for their heart’s desire only to make things worse and still not get what they want. That doesn’t mean how Taylor does things is any less wrong. Choosing the lesser of two evils is still choosing an evil. Let’s say hypothetically that Cauldron was taken down permanently. Do you honestly think Taylor would stop doing what she’s doing? Or rather based on her personality and attitude, she would rather continue using her power to lord over the normal people like she did before? I know it’s only hypothetical, but based on her actions so far I would seriously consider she falls seriously on the latter choice. And lets talk about the “ends justifying the means” huh? Taylor is better simply because she doesn’t do things as widespread as Cauldron? Bigger evil or not, Taylor is still a murderer. Once that line is crossed, there’s no going back about what she will or will not do.She has proven more then once she is ready and willing to kill for what she wants if she needs to. So if her morals keep getting compromised more and more as the stories goes, how can you say with 100% certainty that the line about when to kill or not to kill won’t be further crossed as well? I remember reading a line from another fanfic online that exemplifies this point: “The truest evil is not achieved by the men who think themselves the villain. The truest evil is done by the good man who does what he feels he must, and thus he does it without hesitation.” scoti on September 24, 2013 at 12:03 said: @Axel: You seem to be making some assumptions (deontology is right/righteous, consequentialism is incorrect/evil, power corrupts and corruption worsens indefinitely, etc.) that are rather contested/controversial topics and definitely don’t seem to necessarily hold in this setting… “Choosing the lesser of two evils is still choosing an evil.” That’s two-dimensional thinking. Rarely has Taylor been presented with only two choices; she’s been presented with disastrous situations that, time and again, would end with the deaths of people she cared about and the numerous deaths of people she didn’t even know. Time and again, she’s made choices that spared the worst outcomes for the most people she could manage, given her intel and operational capacity. To do that, she’s had to make some damned hard calls. She’s had to betray trusts, she’s had to destroy lives to save others, she’s had to do awful, awful things. Except, she didn’t have to – you’re right, she could have made ‘moral’ choices, acceptable choices, even if the consequences were too awful to contemplate. She didn’t do that, she made the unacceptable choices, because she was more focused on outcomes for other people than on looking good or holding to essentially arbitrary codes of morality. Maybe that makes her immoral. But it makes her effective. And because of her priorities, I’d rather have her in charge of my fate than almost any other character in this grimdark world she lives in. (I’d pick Dragon sooner, but only because Dragon is normally much more capable of safer forms of intervention. Their intentions are equivalent, so Dragon’s ‘morals’ are a wash compared to Taylor’s.) But at what cost Don? There comes a point where the “effective” choice is no longer acceptable because it comes down to nearly just as bad as the other choice. I would argue that Taylor doesn’t make the effective choice, she simply chooses the easiest one that means the least amount of losses to her. You and Someguy go on about how it’s about how her choices are “effective ” but then again, that goes right to how is she any better then Alexandria or Cauldron? She’s making the choices just like them to ends lives because she no longer sees them as lives. She only sees them as mere numbers, and the more “numbers” she has, that apparently makes her “the better” choice. And THAT is what makes humanity in the story deserve to lose. Not what these other guys are doing, but because of what’s SHE’S doing. Because she can without hesitation, make these choices because SHE thinks she made the best choice. The world won’t be destroyed by Scion or the Endbringers , it will end because of people like Taylor who think that “acceptable losses” is worth what she can only assume are justifiable ends. As long as she can come up with a purely logical reasoning as to who should live and who should die, she can justify ANYTHING she does, no matter how despicable. Sophia was right back in that earlier chapter. They ARE exactly alike. And that is why Taylor, is neither sympathetic, nor likable or even that fun to read. Who she is, as a character, honestly makes me wish she’d die. because she’s just that despicable. To me, she’s honestly on the level of Alexandria, if not on her way already. “Bigger evil or not, Taylor is still a murderer. Once that line is crossed, there’s no going back about what she will or will not do.She has proven more then once she is ready and willing to kill for what she wants if she needs to. So if her morals keep getting compromised more and more as the stories goes, how can you say with 100% certainty that the line about when to kill or not to kill won’t be further crossed as well?” To (attempt to) quote someone else, we don’t think that because we haven’t greased Mount Everest enough for that argument. In the past, Taylor has killed. No one denies that. But is that really an irreversible commitment to evil? Can no one who has killed, for whatever reason, be trusted to not kill again, regardless of the regret or reasons? Then why is it still the “effective” choice? I’m sure that Mannequin agrees. She did in fact just take her minions and let the rest of the people in her territory get terrorized by the nigh-indestructible supervillain perfectly made (literally) to counter her power, to save her own hide…in some alternate universe. In this one, Taylor has repeatedly taken great personal risks and losses because she thought that the end result would be better. Well, for starters, she hasn’t doomed the world by making promises she can’t/hasn’t fulfilled. “And THAT is what makes humanity in the story deserve to lose. Not what these other guys are doing, but because of what’s SHE’S doing. Because she can without hesitation, make these choices because SHE thinks she made the best choice. The world won’t be destroyed by Scion or the Endbringers , it will end because of people like Taylor who think that “acceptable losses” is worth what she can only assume are justifiable ends. As long as she can come up with a purely logical reasoning as to who should live and who should die, she can justify ANYTHING she does, no matter how despicable. Sophia was right back in that earlier chapter. They ARE exactly alike.” You know what, though? She hasn’t. Moreover, every hard choice Taylor has made, she has regretted. And you know what? That’s another difference between her and Cauldron–she regrets her misdeeds, however small or vital. I have no doubt that she will regret having had to do many of the things she did until the day she dies, whether that be this (in-story) day or decades down the line. If you can’t respect and empathize someone making these hard choices, despite their need, regret, and so forth, I can’t make you. I’ll just explain why I feel how I feel and let you take what you will from it. The funny thing is Axel, that you are arguing that people, in a battle for survival, should adhere to the same moral code that people living comfortable lives believe is appropriate. That is NOT going to happen. Morality changes when reality changes, and if you don’t understand that, and refuse to accept it, then it’s not worth fighting with you over it. The passengers only make it worse. They seek conflict, and accelerate degradation of peaceful society. However with Scion going batshit crazy, things went downhill FAST. Rather than a gradual cascade failure of society as younger and younger children developed cape powers, with fewer and fewer social mores imprinted on them before the passengers started molding them, we went from Endbringers every now and then and a S9 emergency to “End of the World” in a few hours. Taylor is a realist. She’s also a teenager, ruthless, and what she does, in the end, is win. When the world is falling down around your ears, you follow the one that gives you a chance at survival. If you don’t follow someone that’s likely to keep you alive, then your opinions about them won’t matter for long anyway. This is no longer civilization. The rules of laws and morality no longer apply. If humanity survives, there will be time for laws and crimes and punishment. https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/slippery-slope The way I see it, the issue with Cauldron’s consequentialism is that it projects so far in the future that it is insanely hubristic. Taylor is by no means ethically ‘clean,’ but she afaik mostly sticks to pretty reasonable time-frames (a couple hours to a couple weeks in many cases, a couple years in the extreme cases like following Dinah’s advice (and she no longer thinks that was right, see below citation)) and that massive separation between how she does “ends justify the means” and how Cauldron does “ends justify the means” puts them in different categories. See extinction 27.2: “I stared down at the roughly circle-shaped patch of darkness in the center of the room…” on. Also, do you take issue with consequentialism/(least of evils) itself or the consequences of consequentialism? Both. It doesn’t matter if her actions have consequences, or if she simply does evil less so then others. Both are still bad. Remember back when all the children backed her up in the school? This was a bunch of children who looked up to a proven bully, torturer and murderer. Remember back when she was showed a video tape of her taking out guards and being compared to being a member of the Slaughterhouse 9? Guess what! That’s NOT supposed to be a good thing! If there are no simple answers, then I refuse the simple answer that she is only trying to do the best she can with the choices of ranging evil that she feels she must. I honestly believe that the truer answer is that Taylor is nothing more then a young woman who was so traumatized by bullying, that she has become a full blown narcissistic sociopath: manipulating and threatening people to get what she wants, intimidating people and gathering power because that’s what she thinks is best, switches sides back and forth based on what is most advantageous to her and plays along with the “good guys” just so she can get what she desires in the end, all the while mocking and tearing down the more idealistic people because her twisted psyche has turned her sense of “morality” into some form of delusion that justifies her actions to herself. It’s not a simple answer, but to me it rings much more truer to reality. Ok, see my reply to you above the first one. Why are there necessarily- or must there be- -no simple answers? What does “simple answers” mean? I would not contest at least some ethical issues in her character, although they are most likely different complaints than you would make. I would say that just as fervently as you believe in your moral framework and the judgements that result from it, and just as much as that rings true to you, that moral framework makes no sense on close examination (by which I mean looking at its judgements in ethical edge cases) to me, and so I choose a different framework that “rings truer to reality to me” and that most likely seems just as bad to you as yours does to me (some variant of consequentialism, see first response). I am sorry that the conversation comes down to something so ambiguous. At this point, I am certain that Axel is the “Axelx Gabriel” who posted the scathing review of Worm on TV Tropes. He also used much the same arguments in the work discussion page, even down to the same logical fallacies. Axel, if you hate this story so much, why are you still here? You did say, and I quote, “Avoid at all costs if you can.” You are a brazen hypocrite. I do encourage my point of view, and I only return because I just wanted to see if anything has changed. Unfortunately, I was wrong. And I stand by my review as accurate to every thing I read about this story from beginning to current end. @Axel: No, you come on here to stir up trouble, spouting out the same illogical garbage, reveling in your own fallacies, and conceding nothing to people who point out the flaws in your arguments. You aren’t encouraging your point of view, you’re trolling for attention. I would advise everyone to avoid responding to Axel at all costs. “Remember back when all the children backed her up in the school? This was a bunch of children who looked up to a proven bully, torturer and murderer.” 1. They were teenagers, not children. You might think of them as children but they really aren’t, any more than a cat is a kitten or a bird an egg. Teenaers don’t think or act like children; why treat them like children? 2. And yet, they looked up to her, they admired or agreed with or even pitied her. Why is this? Perhaps because Taylor isn’t the amoral sociopath you seem to think she is? That is, however, what she is trying to do. And, to be honest, tha fact that she is trying puts her head and shoulders at least above Cauldron and many other major players in this story. http://xkcd.com/386/ I suspect that it has to do with a few things: 1. We see Taylor’s point of view. 2. She keeps a lot fewer secrets. 3. Taylor never pretended/claimed/thought/explained that she had the key to victory. 4. We doubt Cauldron’s “right reasons”. letseveryonemorality on September 24, 2013 at 17:12 said: It’s a lot more complex than that, but not really that hard to understand, at least for anyone who actually knows shit all about the philosophy behind morality. Lets start with one of the more simple and broadly agreed upon theories; There are very few actions that aren’t justifiable in some context, generally these are agreed to be removal of agency and sexual assault. I cannot remember if that’s all of them, but those are generally agreed upon always evil actions. Cauldron has engaged in one of these, and Taylor has been complacent in the same. The difference here is that Taylor holds reservations and general dislike of this sort of thing, Cauldron shows no reservations about it at all. The second set of actions that are generally agreed to always fit into moral categories of “good” or “evil” are selfish and selfless actions. With selfish actions being generally “evil” and selfless actions being generally “good” (it’s worth noting that selfless actions undertaken for selfish reasons are still generally agreed to be “good”). Here we find a much more pronounced divide between the actions of Taylor and those of Cauldron; Taylor is almost universally selfless, Cauldron on the other hand appears to be almost entirely selfish (yet another note: we don’t actually know everything their is to know about Cauldron. The assumption that Cauldron is Selfish is based on currently known information). Next you have the willingness of others to support those making these choices. Taylor not only gives others the choice to support her, and is generally transparent about what she is willing to do, but she also GETS that support when she asks for it. Not out of fear. Out of respect for her results. Taylor is trusted to make morally hard choices because she’s fucking good at it. Cauldron on the other hand doesn’t really give anyone these choices, they don’t provide anyone with this information, they even withheld this from one of their own supporters. To top this all off, Cauldron doesn’t make their results know either. Making it very difficult to judge their results in the first place. Coil is feeling pretty betrayed right about now. Oh wait – no he isn’t. Granted, he did try to kill Taylor, but the plan to overthrow him was in place long before that happened. Taylor is capable of pretty nasty stuff when put under pressure, Triumph, Alexandria, Tag all come to mind but she’s definitely always been willing to cooperate with others during a crisis. That doesn’t excuse or justify her actions. You can’t just erase one evil deed by doing a good one later. Not to mention with all the different ways she COULD’VE done things to stop them, she automatically goes for the most brutal method possible. That’s not justified evil, that’s just sick and sadistic. Even if you say she just lost control in one or some of those moments, does that make anyone in real life any less responsible if they “lose control” for a moment? Unless you’re going to say she suffered from “temporary insanity” I ain’t buying it. I really am just replying to that one post you made because I do kinda agree that the only thing that separates Taylor and Cauldron is scale. Taylor has a lot of flaws but not being a team player isn’t one of them. And I’m saying that she could very well easily be a team player for a much greater evil act. She has enough flaws as both a character and someone with superpowers that she very well can and will make it, whether by choice or unintentionally. @Axel: Worm isn’t really a story about good and evil. Worm is a story about priorities. Wildbow has hit that point over and over and over, that being “good” doesn’t do you any good if you aren’t willing to critically examine the consequences of your morality. Now, I don’t agree with him, and obviously you don’t either, but regardless, there’s no inherent value to judging Taylor as good or evil, because it has nothing to do with the message of the story. Taylor is the hero of the story because she’s farsighted, not because she’s good. And incidentally, that DOES qualify her to judge other characters’ actions. When someone is acting shortsightedly, she totally has the credentials she needs to be justified in calling them out on it. She isn’t judging them on good or evil terms. Thank you, pidgey, for articulating the “does not apply” thing so well. But the problem is that by just going by that viewpoint, you’re following a protagonist that’s neither sympathetic, likable or even right half the time. Or to put it simply, Taylor, as a whole in her character and her actions, i WANT her to die. Because she is a horrible, horrible person. Yes it’s possible to do stories with villain protagonists, but they have to be GOOD about it. You have to be sympathetic to them, you have to understand them. Taylor is neither sympathetic nor is her overall character and “Fun” to actually read about. Put that together with many more characters that are morally questionable or die quickly, put them in a world where everything is horrible and millions die every day, and you have put together the infamous troupe Darkness Induced Audience Apathy. I no longer care what happens to these people. They can all die for all I care because this story has failed to actually make me want to care about them. It has failed for me to actually want them to succeed. And that, is honestly a failure on the writing, I apologize wildbow, if you’re reading this, but this is how I honestly feel. I disagree, Axel. I think there are quite a few villains in literature, TV and movies who aren’t likable at all. Tony Soprano, for example. Overall, there’s no need to apologize. You can rest assured I don’t take your criticism to heart. Simply put, I don’t put a lot of stock in it. There have been three or so people in the last few days who’ve been going through the archives (and who are at different junctures in them) who criticize, but then show a pretty telling lack of reading comprehension. If someone skims the surface or skips sections of the work and then draws broad conclusions, then that’s on them, not on me, and I don’t take it as a failure in the writing. If anything, it points to themes running through Worm. Is Worm perfect? No. Could I stand to fine tune tension or pacing or Taylor’s likability? Sure. Of course. It’s all first draft stuff. Stuff is going to be wobbly here and there. But at the end of the day, people who are enjoying the work far outnumber (and show better comprehension of the work) than this handful of people who don’t. More telling, even, is that the people who I’m talking about, the critics who are missing the mark with some frequency? They’re still here. They may not like the protagonist, or they may take issue with other aspects of the story, but they’re interested enough in the work to devote time to following it and to discussing it. And I’m okay with that. “But the problem is that by just going by that viewpoint, you’re following a protagonist that’s neither sympathetic, likable or even right half the time. Or to put it simply, Taylor, as a whole in her character and her actions, i WANT her to die. Because she is a horrible, horrible person. Yes it’s possible to do stories with villain protagonists, but they have to be GOOD about it. You have to be sympathetic to them, you have to understand them. Taylor is neither sympathetic nor is her overall character and “Fun” to actually read about. Put that together with many more characters that are morally questionable or die quickly, put them in a world where everything is horrible and millions die every day, and you have put together the infamous troupe Darkness Induced Audience Apathy.” I personally find Taylor a sympathetic character, for what seem to be many of the reasons you hate her. She has been thrust into these horrible circumstances and had to figure out the least wrong choice to take. has she always been right? No. Has she regretted those choices, tried to make up and atone when she could? Yes. Has she regretted some of the less wrong choices for the wrongness? Yes. Now tell me, Axel: What is one example of a choice you absolutely, positively hate Taylor for, and why? What would you have done in the shoes of Taylor, Skitter, or Weaver, and why? She doesn’t go for the most brutal method possible, she goes for the most effective with the least collateral damage. Sure, getting info from Nyx and then killing her was brutal; but do you really think letting her go would have turned out better? She didn’t kill Nix, just trapped her via Golem. Clockblocker gave the order to kill Nyx, then Crucible did it himself, Taylor just sanctioned it. Funny how people tend to forget the asshole actions of all the othercharacters when talking about this stuff. Like Taylor does these things completely in a situational vacuum out of her own malice and context doesn’t matter. Not targeting you with that, just an observation. Cephalo: Nyx the S9 clone, not Nix the Vegas hero. Easy mistake to make. So what about us who count killing fucks like Tagg Alexandria and Coil to be a point in her likability favor? Do we just not get a vote or somethin’? @Everyone: Kill all replies to Axel’s comments guys, as Scolopendra said this thing is a Troll, a Westboro one. Do not feed the Troll. A good choice. Given his comments and review, he is either deeply ignorant or simply lying. You seem to believe that evil is a moral absolute (in far more cases than those that are true), not only in the real world, where it’s generally agreed that this isn’t the case, but also in a fictional world where it made very obvious that this isn’t the case. I’d ask you to post some examples of actual “evil” deeds that Taylor has done (hint; she has actually done a few deeds that can generally be argued as moral wrongs), but I not only think you’d fail to point those actually deeds out, I also think it’s really just not worth anyone’s time to continue to argue with someone who’s arguing from false premises. OK Axel, I now know that you are either incapable of intelligent thought or you are intentionally trolling. You are essentially claiming here that there is no such thing as justifiable murder. When Taylor killed Alexandria and Tagg, they were TYRING to get a violent reaction out of her so they could use that reaction against her. Two live body doubles were captured, and both Tagg and Alexandria knew that Taylor was aware through her bug network of what was going on. Then they brought in a dead body. At that point, if I were in Taylor’s shoes and I saw one of my friends dead at the hands of two people who have been escalating violence against my friends, those two people are going to be as dead as I can make them. Right then. Right there. This type of killing is called a crime of passion, because it happens when some actions performed by another put you into a state of temporary insanity. And people in the real world win this sort of justifiable homicide case regularly in court. Plus, she was going to head out after another one. Given that she’d killed one, it was reasonable to assume she’d kill again. It’s both legal and moral to kill someone who is about to kill someone else. “Not to mention with all the different ways she COULD’VE done things to stop them, she automatically goes for the most brutal method possible.” Not true. It’s simply that she is not unwilling to use brutal, sadistic methods when she needs to cause fear, or when other effective options are unavailable to her. Yes, there is that word, “effective,” again. If you can stop or mitigate an evil, but don’t, that is wrong. Picking the lesser of two evils is a good choice; picking the greater because it is not done by your hand is evil. I’m not going to say that Taylor ever lost control of herself, merely that the situation was out of control. Grant Moxham on September 25, 2013 at 04:53 said: snorts by your logic, every parahuman remotely associated with the protectorate is irredeemably evil, for working with an organisation that had a kill-on-site policy for the S9. As far as I’m concerned, there are a couple of big differences between Taylor and Cauldron. As others have pointed out, Taylor attempts to work with others for the greater good. She doesn’t share Cauldron’s arrogance. The other is that Taylor has made some hard choices when they were thrust upon her, whereas Cauldron have gone out of their way to proactively inflict their particular brand of “necessary evil” on others. Finally, looking at Taylor’s choice points, I’m hard-pressed to think of an example where she didn’t choose the least bad of some pretty terrible options. Let the villains rob a bank and maybe hurt people, blow your cover or go with them undercover and try to minimise casualties? Stick with the villains who seem to be decent people vs the ‘heroes’ who don’t? Extort the mayor and retain your chance to topple the evil overlord of Brockton Bay or say “no” and lose that chance? Let the PRT director murder my friends or hit back? Shoot the baby or let it be tortured indefinitely and maybe bring on the end of the world? Taylor has rarely been presented with choices that offer a clear cut “good” option. When presented with a platter of crappy options, she has consistently gone with what seems to be the least bad of them. Cauldron, despite knowing the limitations of Contessa’s power, take a “We can do whatever the hell we want ‘cos we know best and no, you don’t deserve to know about it” attitude to everything. Taylor ain’t as pure as the driven snow, but she’s not comparable to Cauldron. Oh,God,people are still replying to the troll/reincarnation of Tagg who later reincarnates into miyo miyazaki one year later. Guys! Guys? Guys. Dont. Feed. The trolls. This Axel guy is not worth all the effort I see above. He is trying to get a rise out of you and has succeeded. In the future, the safest thing is just to ignore such people; they will go away and seek softer targets. This was an interesting chapter. She is trying to get to Cauldron to get them to reveal their secrets and plans, then the LV capes are somewhat defending/repulsing the invaders, ie the Irregulars. They don’t want Taylor’s group to intervene. I guess I could see why not, they are in the middle of a fight then extracting valuable information. I get why Taylor needs the information too though, and I don’t understand what she is going to do next. Get to Cauldron another way? No, she’ll just enter using the same portal the LV capes used, try and catch up and “render assistance”, while springing Exalt and Revel. Doormaker’s not conscious enough to close it behind them. Yeah. Her problem isn’t that the Vegas Capes are doing this. It’s that they imprisioned, and possibly tourtured Revel and Exalt, and are still keeping their little secrets and agendas in the face of the end of all earths. Taylor isn’t a saint. But she is not going to put up with people prioitizing their secrets and agendas over working together to save humanity. The Vegas Capes decided to go in? Fine. This kind of job suits them. The Vegas Capes decide to take down Revel and Exalt so they don’t have to report back? Not fine. The way it reads is that the Vegas capes are working directly for Cauldron, knowingly too. In that case; heads! Spikes! Walls! She’s also kinda pissed that Weld, of all people, led what is by all accounts an attack on Cauldron. Who, for all their faults and for all that everyone hates them (and everyone pretty much does hate them all), they are still necessary if only because they still have secrets. However, their usefulness is dwindling fast. I’d say Cauldron’s usefulness ran out a long time ago. Because while they still have the plans and the assets and the resources etcthat’s not the same as Doc Mom being useful herself. The situation before the Irregular attack was that the heroes needed Cauldrons shit, but Cauldron was limiting access to said shit, making them more of a hindrance than anything. The ideal scenario in my eyes would be the heroes busting into Cauldron’s HQ, learning their secrets, getting a hold of their plans to implement themselves, and using Contessa and Number Man as their personal Thinker servants. Of course they couldn’t do that because they’d probably come out of it vulnerable to Scion. Disagree,Cauldron have yet to reveal all their cards.There may be a last ditch and extremely costly /risky way to stop Scion that Cauldron haven’t used yet because to them The Godzilla Threshold is yet too be crossed.The Irregulars are doing more harm by betraying Weld and trying to destroy Cauldron. My Ideal scenarios includes Taylor whipping the Traitorous Irregulars buts left and right.After that she would squeeze every info from Doc Mom and consolidate Cauldron in her arsenal. “squeeze every info from Doc Mom.” Literally, I hope. Cauldron is still useful (for now). Its parts, however, are considerably lesser than the whole. grimGrendel on September 24, 2013 at 00:40 said: I did a fan art of Bohu http://grimgrendel.deviantart.com/art/Endringer-Bohu-402425401 Goes hide in a corner Me likey. That’s way better than what I imagined. (basically a giant lego that spreads like a pancake at the bottom) What? No! We need those endbringers, damnit! Nice art. Should probably have had some of the buildings looking warped or changed somehow. Bohu herself looks nicely impressive and intimidating. Maybe this can be a before image and then she does another, with Bohu surrounded by capes, Tohu, and the city destroyed. yakkt on September 24, 2013 at 00:53 said: Endringer. LOL. For whom does the bell toll? Well, you’re not Krustacean, so she’s probably good. Doesn’t Bohu have 3 faces, when she adopts the three powers? Ainix on September 24, 2013 at 05:32 said: Thought that was Tohu. There was a mnemonic a while back: Bohu is the big one, Tohu is the tiny one. (Been caught up since Sting 26.5 but didn’t have anything to post.) I think you’re thinking of Tohu. The tiny one. Bohu’s the big one. I always forget if it’s Tiny Tohu or Towering Tohu. Bohu’s the Builder, Tohu’s the Trio. That’s actually a much better mnemonic. But can Bohu the Builder fix it? LOVEITLOVEITLOVEITLOVEITLOVEITLOVEITLOVEIT. I really appreciate this one. B&T were always the hardest for me to picture. I too am still having trouble figuring Tohu. So there’s a cape called Nix who creates illusions out of harmless smoke and a cape called Nyx who creates illusions out of harmful smoke. Man, that’s weird. I bet there’s a story there. There is. Twins who both took the formula? Mother/daughter? MrVoid on September 24, 2013 at 01:03 said: Love your work. HATEYOUHATEYOUHATEYOU. Nix is an illusion created by Nyx? And the two of them just happened to take the same homophonic nom de guerre? That would be some coincidence. Definitely a story there. Will we hear it before the end of Worm? I’d like to hear that story. Now we need Nick, with a power to pull items out of a big tinkered sack, and Nicks with some sort of blade power. They can then be a new team, the “Nights that say Nik” Would Night be on this team? Wasn’t Nyx-with-a-y a Case 53? Because I bet this is another spot of ghostly power recognition between Cauldron capes. The red one with the vents on head a shoulders. Nyx prototype Nix final result? That would have been bound to create some awkward situations. “Nix is here”. “OH SHIT!” “Our Nix, not the Slaughterhouse Nyx”. More likely the opposite situation. “Nyx is here!” “Good. She owes me five bucks.” “Not that Nix, idiot!” “Oh…Why did Nix pick a name–” “Come on, Nyx is here!” So we learn about the vegas capes and you know things are desperate when fucking Nilbog is on board. Curious if there are different stranger types similar to thinker types and how they interact. How typical would Imp, Tattletale, Taylor’s bug sense do against most strangers? I think Taylor should have removed one of his eyes for old times sake. Bet you wish you had someone with some firepower with your team now huh? Vegas must have been a jason bourne spy/espionage deal all the time. Good chapter overall, thought I wish we could have seen a little more interaction between the angels and the devils in the crowd. I’m curious what Nilbog, Lung, and Shadowstalker are thinking right about now. I thought Nilbog died. he was captured at the same time they captured jack slash. come to think about it jacksy is still alive just in a time loop. You know he’s just sitting there singing too: Jack Slash: “This was a triumph. I’m making a note here, huge success. It’s hard to overstate my satisfaction. Slaughterhouse 9. We do what we can because we can. For the fun of all of us, except the one’s who are dead.” “Do what we want because we can” was a better choice there than what I went with, actually. And “except the ones who are dead” so that continues the fucking typo problem. “But there’s no sense crying over b’ing stuck in time Look on the bright side, you’ll always look in your prime And the killing gets done By the man with skin like sun And hey, look! I am here, still alive” “Weaver, I’m not angry I just want to tell you that now Even though you helped Golem to kill me You set up an ambush To blast me with some containment foam As I’m stuck, I’m hurt because This was a lame way to go!” “But those beams of light create a burning landscape And it’s so dang pretty It will kill every cape So I’m glad I got Jacked And Grey Boy also got sacked Hey, at least I’m still here, still alive” Go ‘head and leave me I think I prefer to stay on Bet Maybe I’ll find someone else to torture Maybe your fathers THAT WAS A JOKE. HAHA. THEY’RE DEAD Anyway, these wounds annoy Can someone go scratch my back? Look at me still talking when there’s no one around I’m just so damn bored, there is Jack shit abound I should start writing a book Or a recipe to cook I’ve got time to kill. I’m still alive And believe I am still alive I doomed you all and I am still alive That makes me feel better, I’m still alive While you’re all dying I’ll be still alive And when you’re dead, I will be still alive Still a-” Scion blows up the city around him. That ‘jack shit’ line made me laugh. Well done. I bet I could make a better one. Well, here we are again. It’s always such a pleasure. Remember when I tried To kill you twice? [citation needed] Oh how we laughed and laughed. Except you weren’t laughing. Under the circumstances We’ve been shockingly kind. You want your friends? So That’s what I’m counting on. I used to want you dead Now I only want you gone. You are more like Bonesaw That you would like to admit. Perhaps, one day you could join us, too. One day she woke me up So we’d be feared forever. What a shame if the same Would never happen to you. You’ve got your (quite) short life left. Go on and get right to it Now I only…Okay, I never said I’d make a better one on the first draft. Hotaru on September 25, 2013 at 05:51 said: Sad part is this has kind of already been done. Link below: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwRuutV8TKc for the best parallel start at 0:35 – 2:12. Hate to double post, but it’s late and I misread, thought you were talking about Bonesaw, not Jack; now I’m just sad. If only I could listen past the first few seconds. Maybe it’s just a knee-jerk reaction to bronies, but that is seriously…ick. See? Whoever complained about no group song from the Dinah/Taylor Bohemian Rhapsody, you got what you wanted here. When was this? Back when Taylor rescued Dinah. It was my version of Taylor asking Dinah about her vision of the end of the world. https://parahumans.wordpress.com/2013/01/19/queen-18-1/#comment-9510 Boom, found it for you. Actually, didn’t have to change hardly anything. The song was very fitting. A better example would probably have been “A Little Vista” back when they took on the Slaughterhouse 9, conveniently also looked up for your singing pleasure here: https://parahumans.wordpress.com/2012/09/15/prey-14-4/ Some say that I may have even done an original piece in an attempt to remake Weaver into a fairy princess. Those people are obviously lying and in no way shape or form will they ever be able to find the comment where I posted the song. The song that obviously wasn’t written. I’ll just wait to do the parody until I’ve reread the first S9 arc or so. Nilbog’s probably still under Bonesaw’s control. I figured he was dead, since none of his creations have been mentioned since Zion flpped. Really? I just figured that the reason his creations aren’t around was that no one was sure that Zion won’t be able to hijack them &/or no one was going to give him any dead bodies to feed them. Possibly because none were under control, or none were useful, or none were alive. I’m almost certain that whatever’s responsible for Scion’s defeat wont be human. Either Parahuman, Animal(s) or Endbringer…. Or he’s not defeated, just… redirected. Really? ‘cos after seeing the impressive showing the Dragon’ s Teeth gave in this (forty normal humans surviving against Scion) I’ve been wondering if Theo was onto something. Remember that Scion crippled all the shards he gave out whereas normal humans have no such limitations. I also strongly suspect he’s using Jack’s trick of reading capes’ shards and automatically avoiding/countering their worst effects. I have no idea how unpowered humans could hurt Scion, but they seem to have a comparative unpredictability to him, so… [Damn, forgot the update times. I’m reposting this so it dosen’t get overlooked. Please don’t be offended by the second posting.] We have confirmation that she won’t get a second trigger in Worm. No “prominent character” will, straight from the mouth of wildbow. Some cool thoughts though. Why am I always the last to hear of these things? Aside from the whole late-to-the-party thing… Wildbow said so in the last comment section. You’re also forgetting the nature of Taylor’s passenger: an administrative node, a communicator, a facilitator. That doesn’t jibe with a ‘healing factor’ or a ‘poison generator.’ If she were to have a second trigger event, it would be something along the lines of coordination and organization. Taylor’s passenger has been ‘crippled’, but we don’t know the extent of it. Originally it’s clear that the alien worm-beast used Taylor’s passenger to manage all of its other semi-autonomous bits. If it hadn’t been crippled, Taylor might be able to coordinate other parahuman powers directly; as it stands, she’s still surprisingly capable of making the most out of other parahuman’s abilities. (By the way, Wildbow, I’m getting freezer burn from all the fridge brilliance you put into that one…) But. If you want to speculate on Moar Power… I think the most interesting development is bird boy. Which is to say, remember how one of the orphans Taylor watched over had a trigger event, and now has the ability to manage birds? It’s been made clear this is a fissioning of Taylor’s passenger itself, after gorging itself on her trials and tribulations. What if that fissioning, that baby passenger, is not crippled? Or is even just ‘less’ crippled? What would happen then? Actually, I can see a loophole there. Can her passanger be healed? I could see an effect similar to a STE there. Increased power and increased control, ect. And, for the record, none of the powers I specified actually fall outside the ‘administraitor’ theme, if the mechanics are considered: 1-2 is simply an extreamly refined application of her ability to order her insects to breed, spin silk, sting, and swarm. It is mearly a step beyond their normal bodily process- like a sword swallower’s abilities. 3 is exactly the power you were thinking of- coordinateing other superpowers. Just with her insect theme still present. 4 is almost the same as 1-2, just with a stronger emphesis on her own body. Thus, 5 is still viable, even without a second trigger event. I’m actually getting kind of excited about the potential applications… it’s very interesting! Nah, bro. Just nah. A programming analogy: TCP-IP and DirectX are both notionally the same sort of thing: an interface between fundamental operations of the computer and some sort of administrative/communications protocol. They’re both, in essence, just ones and zeroes. But they’re still completely different animals, and you cannot use TCP-IP to manage a graphics interface without adding so many lines of code that you may as well just use DirectX. Vice-versa, for LAN/WAN communications: DirectX has some abstractions to help with certain things relating to networking, but it’s just not useful to connect to the internet on its own. ALL of the powers you specified fall out of the ‘administrator’ theme the same way a DirectX would fall outside of a ‘administrator’ theme, except within its domain of graphics management. It doesn’t work, mate. Take the poison angle: you’d have to have code for reprogramming biology, you’d have to have a database of what constitutes poison and what does not, you’d need all sorts of information that requires a specialized application – one that the ‘administrative’ app would call upon, but not one it intrinsically possesses. Of course, that’s all speculation and wankery, anyway; it’s fiction, it can be anything we make of it. But my opinion is that if we go by the in-setting rules that extend from the story thus far, your suggestions just don’t work at all. With the exception of #3 – programmatically speaking, that suggestion would probably work under the passenger’s parameters as a small wrapper or an extension of the ‘Administrator’ object; Taylor’s essentially doing the exact same thing with her bugs. It works… except that it’s clear Scion crippled it to prevent that exact scenario from happening. I can’t imagine wildbow to give Taylor an “I Win” Buton. Giving her the administrator power over passangers/parahumans would make her insainly powerfull. If she could controle Parahumans as she controls her bugs .. who would come in her reach? Regent^42 and she can’t shut it off. That would put her in missery. I don’t know- you’re forgetting that most insects have phermones (chemical triggers) heavily involved in mateing and laying eggs. And that’s not touching on the complex cycles and chemical interactions social insects use to communicate and manage the hive. All that, without a human intelligence directing them, she has already used her powers to do most of that, stimulateing responses she favors or needed. Were her control refined, I can see her gaining something along those lines. I could, actually see her doing it /now/, I don’t know if it’s occured to her yet, though. I think the hang-up you have is the idea of entirly new chemicals. You should know I ment that as an extream case. The in-universe applications would be significantly less drastic, if her power developed in that direction. Ditto with the regen idea… except, again, I can see her takeing Paceana’s idea and running with it. She could- I just don’t think she, brillient though she is, will be able in the time we have left in-story. Taylor is the sort to tweak her powers if she finds an interesting new way to do so. Controling/cooridinateing other capes wouldn’t be a stretch either- that’s essentialy what she already does, with insects. If her passanger was fixed, it is possible that she might attempt something like this… Honestly, I fail to understand how you figured that ended ‘outside the administraitor theme’. And lastly: “But they’re still completely different animals, and you cannot use TCP-IP to manage a graphics interface without adding so many lines of code that you may as well just use DirectX.” Keep in mind: When all you have is a hammer… Well, when you put it that way, you’re not talking about a second trigger event at all… you’re talking about Taylor sitting down with her bugs and an entomology textbook, and working out some REALLY cool tricks. And believe me, those tricks are out there. Bugs can do some goddamned astonishing things, and I’ve really reaaaally been wanting Taylor to bust away from the basics and start using some of them. This is something I’ve been hoping for since this story began. I love science, and I love it when my favorite series use real science in surprising ways in order to overcome plot boulders. So I’m all for this, if it happens. The problem now is that this would require time and peace that Taylor just doesn’t have available to herself at the moment. Maybe she could have done some work on this during her time skip – but we never saw that. (Speaking of, 16-18 is the age range where I had some of the most significant life events I have or ever will have, and it feels strange for that part of her life to have passed us by so quickly. Anyway….) Back to your point, if it were Taylor doing this, refining her control through knowledge of science combined with the information she receives through her linkups, I’d totally love it. HOWEVER, if her passenger suddenly gave her the ability to do things she doesn’t have the capability to do – such as have ants self-modify pheremones in ways they can’t normally – then I would not be a customer for this purchase. You’re right, that wouldn’t work for me at all. Nor would her self-editing her own chemistry via passenger-granted abilities, because we now know that her passenger was not and is not designed to do anything close to things like that. OTHER passengers are, but not hers. And I wouldn’t buy into her gaining the ability to control/coordinate other powers directly via hive mind, unless some truly profoundly canon writing on that subject occurred. But using the power of science to increase her effectiveness (real science, or a reasonable facsimile thereof)? Yes, please. If her passenger was fixed, that’d be checkmate. Her passenger doubtless started with the ability to perceive the channels that Scion is working through in order to project himself into whatever dimension he’s in; she could first use it to track down all the other passengers whose abilities she finds useful, then she could aim them at the right target. Of course, if her passenger could do all that, why would it need her? Perhaps part of what’s crippled is its own autonomy. Once fixed, it could become Psion Junior, and either kill Taylor if it’s feeling used and abused, or just leave her, or it could decide to play with her… veekie on September 24, 2013 at 04:36 said: I’d bet pretty much all she could get from her shard, even with an STE, would be expanded control. Based on the bird kid, animals are fair game, and probably, so are people and shards. So either Master expansion or Trump extension for power control, the former to make Heartbreaker look like small change and the latter to gain access to shards, see what they see, turning on or off their powers at will. Neither however, would work with Taylor’s character as written. Both turn her from an underdog, a guile character, into a heavy hitter. It simply wouldn’t make a good story, and that’s why she wouldn’t get a second trigger. How about increased range? Like every insect acts as a relay station, or well -unlimited/continental- range. In that vein didn’t Panacea nonchalantly hand Taylor “the bugs TO TAKE OVER THE WORLD”? Only if the world survives long enough. An eviler Taylor would be a classic Class-S threat now. The way I read it, Taylor controls the actions of the bugs by some sort of mental control, not pheromones. She can control not only bugs which she can’t see or which are far away, or ones in windy conditions, or which are on the other side of one or many walls, or even within/without a hermetically sealed container, or underwater, or underground, or in a dog, or even ones which don’t use pheromones. As for the mating and whatnot, I assume she just tells them to mate, roughly the equivalent of (for instance) Regent forcing two people to have sex. Does he do this by spraying perfume or whatever? No, he actually forces them to put the appropriate body parts together. “Were her control refined, I can see her gaining something along those lines.” How would you have (to pick an example you suggested) bugs produce cyanide? It is not a chemical they make, and getting them to make it would require you to be able to control the bugs on a molecular level! Even more mundane kinds of applications fall under this; even something “simple” like getting them to inject stomach acid with their stings (assume for a moment that the bug’s stomach uses acid) would require being able to tinker with the individual cells in the venom gland to make them work like digestive gland cells. “Ditto with the regen idea… except, again, I can see her takeing Paceana’s idea and running with it. She could- I just don’t think she, brillient though she is, will be able in the time we have left in-story. Taylor is the sort to tweak her powers if she finds an interesting new way to do so.” She can find new ways to use her powers, but this doesn’t mean she can give herself other peoples’ powers by trying really hard. …you should not try to use it to make a stained-glass window. It’s one thing if these were just funny-shaped nails, or maybe screws, but the control needed to make these fundamental changes to bugs’ biology are far beyond what Taylor’s control has, or can be. You’re talking about basically giving her a whole new superpower. “Of course, if her passenger could do all that, why would it need her?” This ties back into why Scion gave these out at all, which I suspect has something to do with needing to reproduce. I’m not sure if even controlling every bug in North America would qualify her as Class-A. They are technically exponentially reproducing minions, but so are Bitch’s dogs and you don’t see her being considered a Class-S, now do you? And all the bugs in the world don’t give you the raw destructive power of an Endbringer or something. Erm, she could simultaneously attack the entire infrastructure. All insects that are not busy eating crops, disabling power grids & fouling water sources are attacking humans.. dragonflies loaded with ticks, mosquitoes visiting the nearest infectious diseases wing first, cockroaches raiding super markets. Sure you can plaster every inch of the earth with Neonicotinoides but the long term damage is probably identical. 1, and 4 all require a level of control over not just the actions of the insects but also their cells, and probably their molecules for 1. As for 2…it involves generating chemicals in her own body. How is this related to insect control? 1, 2, and 4 are very little like her current ability. Grue’s STE seems to give an all-new power, but it was building off of an unnoticed side effect of the darkness (the power dampening). 3 is almost the polar opposite of her control over bugs, so I find it unlikely as well. However, it uses a mechanism something like her current power, so it is the most probable of those listed. If Taylor were to re-trigger, I’d guess it would be an expansion in the variety of creatures she can control, or else something more subtle (like an improved ability to use the bugs’ senses, or improved range, or something like that). – short but sweet. Short but very sweet. Drone 23.2 is in my top five chapters not least because I liked the brief glimpse we got of the Vegas capes so much – @_@ at Satyr’s power. Daaaaaaayum! – wonder if he replaced Imp too. That’d be a hell of a trump card, wouldn’t it. – so wait, the Vegas capes are beating down the Case-53s as we speak? And we’re missing it? Talk about offscreen moments of awesome! -amazing quickly people get used to shit. The new normal is now casual conversations in the Simurgh’s shadow, huh. – Legend is such a great guy. He’s just … good. – Chevalier done upgraded, yeah! Endbringer couture for the win. – Legend is such a great guy. He’s just … good. – Legend is such a great guy. He’s just … good. Legend is one of the best. Straight up. Him, Weld, Dragon, maybe Miss Militia … simple, straightforward idealists. TinkerTailor on September 24, 2013 at 02:41 said: Don’t forget Chevalier. Chevalier is less clear-cut. Legend, Weld, and Dragon are Captain America or Superman types; Chevalier is more Batman. Miss Militia is certainly more idealistic than you would expect someone with her childhood to be. She spent her first several years in a village hiding in a warzone, before having nearly everyone in it killed and being dragged out, watching a kid she knew all her life get caught in a trap and killed, then needing to kill her tormentors to escape, then being brought back to basically be a child vigilante in America…those make most of Taylor’s problems look petty. Re: the “child vigilante” thing. It helps that the Wards, at least for a few weeks around the inaugural meeting, were a chance for kids to be kids. No one in charge of the Wards wanted them to be child vigilantes, but Behemoth put paid to that. In retrospect, that explains a lot about Miss Militia and Chevalier, and depending on when Weld was recruited, him as well. Armsmaster, not so much, but he needed cybernetic implants and a girlfriend to become something approximating a decent human being so probably a bad (or at least sour) apple from the start. >>those make most of Taylor’s problems look petty.<< I said pretty much the same thing in the previous chapter as an example of someone who didn't succumb to her shard despite great trauma in her life. Someone, I believe farmerbob, replied that since third world children are supposed to become adults earlier, being used as a human minesweeper and being victim to ethnic cleansing was proportionally less traumatic for MM than being bullied and closed in a locker was for Taylor. I'm not sure what to make of that argument. AMR, you completely misunderstood what I said. Perhaps I didn’t say it clearly enough. MM was treated FAR worse that Taylor ever was before they became part of the cape community. She was also far more adult, mentally, because in third world countries, if you aren’t one of the lucky rich, you grow up fast or you die. If you had exposed MM to the same experiences as Taylor, when she was Taylor’s age, with MM’s prior history/memory retained, she would have ended the bullying fast enough to make your head spin – probably without using powers at all. Essentially, MM was more mentally mature at 10 or whenever she got her power than Taylor was at 16. There’s not a whole lot of difference between the MM we see now and the MM we saw in the flashback. Taylor on the other hand has changed drastically. You’re right, I misunderstood what you meant. Not sure I agree with you even now, but I apologise for quoting you after mangling what you meant to say. No harm done man, there will always be miscommunication and confusion. That’s why we can respond to each other. Ultimately the order of the trauma matters. Take someone who’s had a fairly privileged life then plunge them into trauma and they’ll generally handle it worse than someone who’s had a traumatic life then a less traumatic one, then a traumatic one again like Miss Militia. It’s like mocking people for being upset over “first world problems” when others have it so much worse. But how much a person can cope with depends on how much they’ve needed to develop the ability to cope during their life – especially their formative years. Some people take their own lives in response to the sort of shit Taylor endured in High School because it’s too much to cope with when they weren’t ready. It’s all relative. Taylor will with no shit put up. Looking forward to next chapter, most definitely. And that differs from normal? There’s “more Worm” anticipation, and then there’s “more Worm fight scene” anticipation. 😀 And there’s that rush again… “I came here to save the world and chew bubblegum, and every bubblegum factory’s been destroyed.” -Taylor, while wearing sunglasses The Irregulars- “Meh we can take her.” Then Numbers Man calculates the odds of that and starts laughing uncontrollably. Actually, the odds of Taylor defeating the Irregulars are exactly a million to one. Time for the Law of Narrative Causality to take effect. That was kinda the point. Almost like the odds of her killing Alexandria, one could say… And Taylor adds to the awesome. Ok, this is ridiculous by now. Why is it Taylor ALWAYS has some speech ready and waiting for no matter what the situation or question arises to her? It honestly is really annoying and comes off really preachy. Because she’s the hero the world deserves, but not the one it needs right now. So they’ll try and stop her. Because she can take it. Because she’s not our hero. She’s our buzzing guardian. A watchful lovebug protector. A Dark Ladybug. I don’t know whether to consider that insulting to Batman or just dodging the question. Bat-Person does not need to be insultet further. Ben Affleck is enough. After Heath Ledger, I’m willing to give Affleck a shot. Amen to that. Everyone else in these films had more charisma the Batdude. The curse of that character. Batman = Dick Superman = Superdick Not even worth pirating. What’s wrong with Affleck, anyways? Many people are still butthurt over the abysmal Daredevil.Ben Affleck took the brunt of the blame. IMO ,he doesn’t deserved to be saddled by that and have proven himself to be a great artist since then. The truth is there haven’t a great Batman /Bruce Wayne portrayal outside of the animated universe,unlike Superman. All the actors portraying him so far had either subpar or just adequate, even Bale. I agree somewhat with the Nostalgia Critic about Keaton’s performance. Also, I hear the Director’s Cut of Daredevil is much better. Apparently the executives meddled and wanted more of a love plot in there so they could make some money off Electra next. Great director, average actor at his best. At his worst…just watch Gigli. I’m a great fan of Batman and I have been a rather harsh critic of Taylor in the past, but Batman is a God Mode Sue way more than Taylor could ever hope to be.The first time he beat Superman it was awesome, by the fortieth it’s just ridiculous. Dan on September 25, 2013 at 11:10 said: In fairness, coming up with ways to keep Superman from blowing the universe up every time he has a midlife crisis or a witch sneezes at him is basically Batman’s job. And by basically I mean it’s explicitly been pointed out in the JL comics several times. The other JL members intentionally tell him as many of their weaknesses as they can figure out specifically so they can’t go off on a mind-control rampage and level a city without opposition. It seems routine because it’s literally routine, it’s the SOP from the Justice League manual. Because she’s good at improvising, speaks what she feels, and her shard is similar to Jack’s. Yeah but the way she keeps saying it over and over makes it come out like a preaching speech, and then the conversation ends not long after as if she’s automatically right. That happens quite often with people knowing for killing “national heros”. That doesn’t make her automatically right though. No, buts its a damn good argument 😉 It’s arguments like that is what makes Taylor an unsympathetic character in my eyes. Would you feel more sympathetic to her if she had bad arguments then? Like maybe if her she knew it was a bad argument and that she was wrong and a horrible person but kept on believing in her way regardless? Because that’s so much more realistic, right? I’m sure all those people you know in life who are wrong KNOW they are wrong, they just stick to their guns anyway? “I’m sure all those people you know in life who are wrong KNOW they are wrong, they just stick to their guns anyway?” Sounds like my dear mother 😉 No, it would be about the same. She’s not trying to justify that what she did was right, she’s trying to justify that she has every right to do whats right because her sense of morals is automatically better then everyone elses. “…forcing your good intentions on others is no different from an evil act.” “she’s trying to justify that she has every right to do whats right because her sense of morals is automatically better then everyone elses” That sounds like Germanys “Green” Party. But on the topic: I do not get that kind of vibe from her. Shes quick on thought with speeches. But not that preachy in my eyes. “She’s not trying to justify that what she did was right, she’s trying to justify that she has every right to do whats right because her sense of morals is automatically better then everyone elses.” Please explain why you think so. You complain about Taylor being able to make up speeches on the fly. Someone points out that Taylor is good at doing everything on the fly. You complain about the people Taylor speeches at not having a good reply ready. Have you considered that, maybe, they aren’t as good as Taylor is at making stuff up on the fly? She controls bugs. Of course she does things on the fly. groans Idunno, mate. Seems to me she’s been awkward and unready plenty of times… and this is a superhero story, after all. Things like false starts and conversational paths that lead nowhere are trimmed away so as not to bore or confuse, usually. I would say that she has a speech ready and is rarely caught off guard because she has an administrator shard, and she’s exercised that ability very strongly. You don’t even need a special power for that, some people in the real world are VERY good at impromptu speaking. So really its not her, its just the shard. The shard shapes her, just like it shapes every other cape. Just like a real world person’s strengths and weaknesses affect how they react to the world around them. The shards enhance some aspects of personality, and suppress others. But it’s something outside of her, not originally herself. From the way you describe it about enhancing some personality and supressing others, it comes off like brainwashing. Thats a discussion Taylor had with herself sometimes. Or Bonesaw/Riley. Do we know? It may depend on the “strengh” of the passenger. And does is matter 4+ years later? Taylor would be another person without the passenger, thats for sure. She would likely be dead. And if she had survived she still would be different. So much had happend to her. She WAS a warlord, she WAS in jail, she WAS a hero and she IS a soldier at last. She is a leader, a general and a strategist. She would not have that oppertunity. And she is a thinker class cape. Her thoughts are different from ordinary humans. She has another sense and even sees/feels the world different. The person we read about is most likely a blending of human and passenger. Bitch, Labyrinth, Burnscar, and Accord are examples of shards’ influence being prominent over capes. Your point being? Do you really think that Shards don’t brainwash people to an extent? There have been many prominent examples of shards doing that. Glassware on September 24, 2013 at 12:51 said: Oh, hey, are you that guy from tvtropes that wrote that hilariously inaccurate review comparing Wildbow to Garth Ennis? If so, I’m glad to see that you’re still reading the story, if only to find more things to complain about. Also, Taylor doesn’t always have the right speech prepared, and I’m not sure where you’re getting that idea. She’s a moderately competent debater, but on several occasions she can’t find anything to say or her speeches fail her (see: Panacea). Yes I did write that review, and I stand by it because that’s is the honest opinion I had of the story after reading it. Disagree with me all you like, but I will stand by that review 100%. You read what? A million words of a tale that you don`t like just to have the necessary moral ground to criticize a fictional character? A character that is so well described and characterized that you actually can criticize her as if she was a human being? Wait a minute … you have a lot of free time obviously, I don`t. I like to read the contradictory, specially because I want to learn how to write better, but I will start to ignore you comments. I’ll give that he’s a successful troll. He publicly shits on things and offers nothing constructive. I can understand and accept critiques, but he goes beyond that into nonsense. He doesn’t offer any things on how to improve the story or writing, only negative statements and logical fallacies. He uses the slippery slope enough that he could open a waterpark, but that would actually be a constructive use of things and we know he will never do that. But more to the point, like Wildbow said below, he’s still here. He said he came here to see if things changed, but they didn’t. By his own review, he should have avoided this place, but he lingers here for some reason. If he really hated it so much, he would have either never come back, or left immediately. No, I’m certain he’s just trolling and attention whoring. Didn’t wildbow say that above? Geez, directions are kind of confusing… Yeah, the organization of posts was doing something kind of strange. That’s what I get for responding from my phone. Really? You stand by comparing Worm to The Authority and Garth Ennis? Because that was completely cracky comparison that only shows you haven’t read much of either. Oh, yeah, I remembered this guy when I scrolled up and noticed you say this. The comparison is boggling. I haven’t read The Authority, but I have read The Boys. He seems to be one of those people so divorced from reality that it’s better to not even waste time arguing with him. The Sye Ten Bruggencate of Worm readers, you might say. I would, but… That’s kinda like me. I’m more like http://xkcd.com/1081/ Lucky. Wait, what did he write? What was insulting about either comparison? I just looked up both cursorily and neither looked like particularly bad things (Garth Ennis actually looked really cool). She is preaching the code: – Do not kill. – Unite against the greater threats. – Do not unmask. It is a simple code that has been in use since the beggining of the parahumans in this world. She preaches what she believes. OK, she killed three persons. Two were self defence, the third (Alexandria) had broken the code or Taylor thought so. I still consider Taylor as Chaotic Good, she follows her own code of honor. Why she has the right to impose her code of honor on others? She doesn`t but she is human. Lets give a real life example: There are people out there that consider that a woman that is not wearing a Burka must be punished. And rape is a fairly normal punishment for this crime. I disagree and an quite willing to impose MY beliefs over their whenever possible. There is a preacher here in my country preaching that homosexualism is a disease. His followers agree with him. But if he or his followers act on their beliefs I will support full police action against them and soon. And, on another subject: Cauldron is Lawfull Evil. I would argue that Taylor is a Well Intentioned Extremist and well on her way to being Lawful Evil too. OK, a reasonable argument. I will read your comments after all. But notice that we can agree to disagree on the behavior of a fictional character. This proves the ability of the author. And if it serves the greater good she is ok with it. She was LE as the BB warlord. LN to LG in her Wards times, but these where not that desperate. Being a well-intentioned extremist is better than being an idealist who can’t solve the problems. A rope of iron is better than a rope of sand when you’re fighting things on the scale of Lung or Coil, let alone the S9, Endbringers, or Scion. And in order to be LE, she would have to be doing this for selfish reasons. She honestly wants to do what is best for the world; have her numerous cases of self-sacrifice not convinced you of this? Taylor doesn’t strike me as chaotic. Imp is CN in my book. I go with the lawfull side with taylor. She is lawfull to her code and to the unwritten rules. Her actions are well planned or planned on a wim but seldomly emotionaly spontainous. In this story are few CE Characters … old Bonesaw, Bakuda come to my mind. The Villains are mostly NE or LE. Bitch – N Tattletale – NE Grue – LN Regent – CN Imp – CN Parian – N Foil – N The G – N – E for me is more about the measures taken and not about being “evil”. Few are evil for the shits an giggles. I’d peg Bitch as closest NE or CE. She certainly fits the selfishness required for evil. Parian and Foil both strike me as being on the good side of neutral, despite being villains. But a lot of this has to to with the objectivity and graininess of the D&D alignment scale. It works well with gods dictating what X, Y, and Z are, but…less so when we have actual people in a world of gray, with splashes of black. Hrm, I would actually put Bitch at close to True Neutral. She can be very erratic when it comes to her interactions with humans because she simply doesn’t understand humans very well. She has some higher function mental abilities that dogs don’t, but at her core she reacts to people around her like a dog reacts to other dogs. Challenges, finding her place, comfort, closeness and distance depending on mood. Actually giving her an alignment at all is difficult because of how tied into dog psychology she is. I’d be willing to bet that Wildbow has used real world experiences with their dogs present & past to help model Bitch’s behavior. I’m sure Bitch does act like a dog. If Gary Gygax was a dog, we’d probably be agreeing: Bitch is True Neutral. However, I don’t account for “X thinks like a Y, hence the behaviors that would be considered evil for a normal person don’t count,” because if we do that we have to consider all sorts of subjective morality…which includes such things as religious texts okaying slavery, murder, or (under certain circumstances) rape. Would a man who only commits murders or rapes condoned by his morality be considered good or evil? But this gets back into “D&D alignment is a clumsy tool for complex morality, as that found in Worm.” D&D has a terrible alignment system that isn’t applicable to most grey and grey stories. I’d put Taylor as chaotic neutral with a tendency towards chaotic good. She herself says she’s not a hero and she does not have the devotion and willingness to make sacrifices for the greater good, but she is willing to help those in need and is not cruel. Cauldron is not a person and hence has no alignment. The Doctor and Alexandria match Neutral Good best out of the standard alignments. They are not particularly honest or lawful, but have a willingness to sacrifice and work for the greater good that puts them above neutral. Chaotic good because she fought Leviatan, than went against Behemoth (this last was part of her probation and reduced her time in prision, but …). She saved a lot of people inside a shelter by facing Leviatan one on one. Saved a girl from being raped even though said girl had ignored her bullying in the past and saving her was bad for her mission at the time. Taylor does good things, even when she looses a limb or two doing them. But she follows her own code. So: chaotic good. I agree with the second part of your statement if we’re talking about non-4th alignments, and all of it if we’re talking 4th. Taylor is…well, you could make a good argument for three of the four extreme alignments: LG because she follows firm moral principles, CG because she has good intentions, but she doesn’t follow the law; or LE because she does evil actions despite following a “code of honor”. If we try to average these out, we get an averaged alignment of 1/3 LG, which isn’t much off from neutral…yeah, base D&D is not intended for gray-and-gray morality. Organizations can have alignments, as much as people can. I’d peg the organization as a whole and Doctor Mother in particular as Lawful Cryptic, and Alexandria as Ruthless Good. People who consider rape is a normal punishment for not wearing burqa are considered criminal extremist (and evil scumbags or Chaotic evil in the spirit of this alighnment system)even by people are actively promoting burqa .Perhaps you should consider a more realisc real life example. I understand your distaste with such an example, what with it bringing up xenophobia and religious differences as a way to provide a “safer” example that avoids all the controversies associated with more local religious extremists. Some atheists think that it’s okay to rape and objectify women. They’ll dismiss women and their concerns out of hand and insist there’s no need to protect them from molestation. There are way too many of them in the so-called Men’s Rights Movement who treat women pretty horrendously. We’re talking people who think that certain things people do don’t count as rape. There are even a couple of prominent atheists around which such individuals gather and defend to the death while accusing those who disagree with him of being bullies or fascists. So I’m betting there are extremists around for pretty much any group related to religion that are seen as scum to more moderate folks. That some particular church wishes they could hurt or kill certain people in accordance to their religious teachings over sexuality or family planning or having a different religion doesn’t mean the church is one of Chaos. It just means they have a different idea of Order. And they’re dicks. Total, complete, circumcised dicks. If there’s anything to take away from all this, it’s that even such concepts as Chaos and Order can be subjective. After all, those extremists may feel that those less extreme are Evil or Chaotic compared to them. Seriously, the term No True Scotsman needs to be renamed. on the subject of grey, you have any thoughts on Tactics Ogre? i haven’t played in a while, but from what i remember, the main choice there was between order and chaos, with there being some dark stuff on both paths. Never played Tactics Ogre, but Order is generally depicted as having a dark side. A lot of regimes will use maintaining Order as a reason to do all kinds of things to people. Avoiding Godwin’s Law on this one, my favorite example tends to be Argentina’s Dirty War. Even then, the disorder they’re fighting could be a matter of opinion. Dickdom has no confession. Some holy books make it easier to be dicks then others, but still… Please note that I provided a Christian example also. And I was using extreme examples. The problem with the Christian example is that the guy (that actually also preaches against women) is quite popular around here. An example of extreme behavior doesn´t need to include the statistical average. It is an extreme case after all. Anyway, I really shouldn`t use MY personal beliefs here, there certainly were good examples in the tale (like Tagg`s belief system). So, … sorry. Apology inserted bellow. Hmm, she’s just using the same speech she uses every single time. That people who keep secrets and refuse to engage in teamwork are the reason humanity is losing. I’m sure we’ve covered this one before. She doesn’t always have a speech ready, she’s just constantly thinking and analysing stuff (basically the same skill she demonstrates on the battlefield) and is decent at putting what she’s thinking into words. “Preachy” is very subjective. One person’s “casual” is another person’s “pretentious” is another person’s “overly familiar”. Lots of kids in high school get teased just because they have an above average vocabulary. Personally I don’t find Taylor preachy, but that’s not really something that can be argued. Umh… this update was… interesting. I’m not sure how much of the fever we have to thank, but the story flow went from directionless/idling (in an appropriate moment, with everyone reeling and wondering what to do next) to extremely focused (in an appropriate moment: when people underestimate Taylor and she kicks their arses). Still, I do wish you a prompt recovery, even if I’m enjoying the meta-meta-analisys 😛 Legend was… exactly as I’ve read it so far. Considering how little screentime he had, that’s pretty impressive on your part. Chevalier, however, was unexpectedly grim and paranoid… then I remembered his girlfriend’s power (or its side effects). Dragon was not described enough(?) in spots, imho you should at least write what her reaction to the hug was, if you can fit it in. (sorry, cannot really articulate it better than this) Taylor could not find two groups of people before the battle. Her family and D&D. The parallel, whether intentional or not, is quite nice. I’m hoping it will go somewhere by the end of the story. She really needs a mom. Weaver, nice job making Golem a possible accessory if you do not make it out in time… or from a different portal, or without anyone to break those hands, or if a pissed off case 53 comes out before you… ;P Chevalier strikes me as breaking down a bit from stress and horror. Reasonable given the circumstances… I can’t imagine that Defiant and Dragon (it feels wrong to say it like that, but…D&D…) would make good parents, especially foster ones to Taylor. Kinda hard to be a father figure when you’ve tried to get her killed… …I might need to cut down on the number of ellipses I use… One of these days, you’ll cause an apocalyptic solar ellipse. dbdatvic on September 17, 2017 at 01:19 said: It only took until 2017! –Dave, who was directly under the middle dot, near Sweetwater TN ps: and the hyperbole orbit means it happens again in 2024, but HIGHER UP I was ready to give up on Worm for that last update (Taylor’s last sentence really ,really struck me hard) and maybe come back after a month or so.Thankfully someone convince me to give it one more update and this one is just good enough to rescind my furlough. Now is for hoping hose traitorous Irregulars having bug stuffed orifices all year long. Hiya! I thought I recognized your username! Aranfan on September 24, 2013 at 08:22 said: Oh hey, Foil lived! Cool. And Bastard Too! Guess Scion’s path of victory showed him he’d better not kill any of Bitch’s dogs. To be fair, at that point, Bastard was more of a colossal, angry teratoma than a canine. I was thinking more along the lines of Puppy Akira I was just remembering descriptions I’ve read about teratomas that have been removed from patients. A lot of the times it’s basically a ball of hair, teeth, and other malformed, undeveloped organs. The Akira analogy works too! I wonder how she managed that. Did Parian fling her right into Amy’s hosptial? Does she have rocket boots? Is one of her powers Team Rocket falling? They must have set something before the fight. That was clearly a rehearsed move. Parian was involved. And Foil has perfect timing. This seemed to be planned. Foil probably had a parachute. Even a very small dragline parachute would allow her to control her flight and hit the ground safely, with her reflexes. I would not be surprised if she modified the physical properties of any objects on her person to be buoyant in air and have slightly more wind resistance. I don’t think neither Foil nor Parian have that ability. Astro on March 31, 2017 at 10:36 said: She can make her costume frictionless! Just the smallest upbeat. Thank you. I really want to see the Undersiders in Vegas. They’re better suited for a place like that than BB in a lot of ways. I don’t know… Vegas had an inordinate number of Thinkers and Strangers among its parahumans, meaning that they’d need to ward against infiltration 24/7. Alas poor fakes they’ve been roused. Vegas capes? Jesus God! That’s a huge blinking DO NOT TRUST sign right there. Especially that Satyrical fucker, wouldn’t let him anywhere near a high school. If Taylor isn’t careful she might wake up in a run down Volkswagen on the side of a desert road with her kidneys missing and a hotel bill stapled to her forehead. Las Vegas is not a good town for superpowers. Reality itself is too twisted. The fact that Las Vegas produced Thinkers and Strangers like flies does not surprise me one iota. While I get that as Taylor has the admin shard she’ll always be making plans and getting others to listen to her and follow those plans, but it still irks a bit just how lacking in initiative and actual thinking the rest are. I get that there really isn’t anything the author can do about it as he doesn’t have the ability to come up with better-than-99th-percentile plans, but it’s still a bit annoying. “You’re the reason humanity deserves to get wiped out.” Times of emotional strain play havoc with our logical abilities. Nope, Chevalier is organizing a resistance so that next time they do not fight in a way so uncoordinated. Dragon and deviant must be doing a lot of maintenance work. I am sure that others are healing, fixing things, coordinating the remaining normal humans so that they will have a chance of survival … But we are following Taylor in her mad rush for knowledge. I think it’s less that the others don’t have initiative or plans and more that the narrative, being highly Taylor-centric (given that 90% of it is told from Taylor’s point of view), doesn’t make note of the others’ plans so much. We’re going to deal with the aftermath of another team’s plans (the Irregulars’ assault on Cauldron) in an attempt to recover yet another team’s potential plans (Cauldron’s last resort to take down Scion). The others have plans, we just don’t see as much of them. I’m running a Worm-inspired RP on the Bay12 forums, here. It’s still up in the air as to if it will be in the Wormverse, an alternate timeline, or a whole new world, among other things, but I hope to have things figured out once more players weigh in. I’m up for idea-making, I’m a team player like that. Though I will note that we have a solid base, if not in mechanics then in character creation, on the #WeaversDice irc. Contributions from many, including Our Esteemed Author. It’s a neat way to get variation in powers, and I think it suits the setting if you basically don’t get to choose which power you wind up with. liza on September 25, 2013 at 07:24 said: RP sounds interesting. I’d love to give it a try. Could someone also please tell me how to get to the aforementioned irc? link please. I’ve been searching for a good rp for a worm or a worm-like setting. Huh, I though I linked. I know I tried to. http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=131428.0 wildbow, you seem to be responding to comments very quickly…(insert joke based on guessing the existence of a comment-responding AI that I cannot figure out what would be while still being funny)? shows up out of nowhere and makes the joke all the bystanders rejoice disappears in a puff of smoke Hey, it worked for Parahumans Online… 😛 Yes, but we have something Parahumans Online doesn’t. A spot behind the fourth wall? You’ll want to watch out by the fourth wall. I hear they burn bad comics atop it, so you might get some ash on you. captainhaplo on September 24, 2013 at 22:29 said: Whew, I’ve finally managed to catch up! A friend linked me to this a few weeks ago and it’s taken me about that much time to read through it all. Wanted to swing in and say that I absolutely love this story, even as it keeps punching me in the gut time and time again. It just hurts too good to stop reading. Hello there, captainhaplo, the most haplo captain-esque reader of all time. No need to just swing in and swing out. Start tossing some webbing around, make a nest, maybe invite some flies into your parlor. Don’t worry, many of us have been punched in the gut. One or two could stand to be punched in the gut a few more times, but that’s neither here nor there. It’s waiting for them next time they leave the house, along with a rather large mook and his pet baseball bat “Knee-coli”. Yep, lots of emotional responses tied up in the story, which is one reason to keep on reading. You’ll laugh. You’ll cry. You’ll read the Necronomicon to cheer up after one or two of the chapters. Or, if the Necronomicon is too light, you can join us down here in the comments. Barring the troll up above, it’s not a bad place. Free electroshock. Decent pills. All the padded rooms you could enjoy. Even two Lincolns for every Napoleon. Even if you want to swing back out, I was dropping in to say Welcome to the comments, captainhaplo. puts on a LOTR goblin mask I’ll get you next time, Spider-captainhaplo! Next time! puts on a witches hat And your little dog Frodo too! And that was Psycho Gecko, who people keep telling me is crazy. He doesn’t seem very crazy, but maybe I’m just desensitized to that from Bay12. Anyways, greetings. I just got on board…wow, was it really a couple months ago? Time flies, both in the Wormverse and IRL. Welcome, and enjoy what is left of the ride. Dwarf Fortress will definitely desensitize you. The crimes against humanity/nature/physics that are regularly discussed with laughter on the Dwarf Fortress forums far eclipse the worst that Psycho Gecko has ever done. Even his jokes about the Siberian eating nursery veal are pretty mild fare for the Bay12 crowd. The game that brought you cat biscuits, “kitten rot,” and a canine-based system of abusing dwarven children from infancy to maturity known as “Dwarven Child Care”…actually, that last one sounds a lot like the dwarves read Worm and didn’t realize people couldn’t have trigger events in their world. I have yet to see a dwarf approach an enemy naked, then squeeze out a brick from the usual hiding place and beat them over the head with it, then connect them to a bowling-ball powered ass fucking dildo machine. But then, I have less and less time for recounting such wild adventures over here. Psycho, I hate to break it to you, but a forum member was perma-banned after he modded the game to allow something very similar, probably actually worse than that. So something like I did was considered too hardcore for those forums? What about a trap that activates if you attempt to have sex with a goat? Did they ever make one of those, or am I ahead of the curve there too? Hrm, but Dwarven females would use their carried children as shields in combat. Toady has tried to stay away from real biology in DF. There have been people trying to convince him to implement feces, urine, and actual sex into the game rather than spore reproduction and monogamy – but he really doesn’t want his game to become even more crude than it can already be. Some folks would use the abovementioned features in ways that wouldn’t be terribly offensive. Others would find any way possible to weaponize them in the most disgusting ways possible. In the end, I think he’s right to stay away from getting too detailed on the biology byproducts and mechanics of reproduction. And let’s not forget the other great hits like players recruiting only nursing mothers into their infantry so that babies acted as ablative armor, using captive necromancers to increase livestock yields (delicious zombie bacon!), and lots of debates on how best to cause dwarves to trigger a psychotic mood where they would kill a nobleman and use his remains to craft a legendary artifact. …And then there was the mermaid farming, a setup so horrifying that the game’s designer hastily patched it to prevent such events from happening ever again. Yes, yes, I’ve read the Boatmurdered. It really has to be noted that Dorf Science has realised the best way to prevent mass tantrum spirals is to desensitise them to tragedy via mass-produced death. They like to congregate in dining rooms- so naturally you build a machine above them to regularly dispense puppies from the roof to come slamming down in front of them whilst they’re eating. All in the name of progress, of course. I go away and I miss what I believe is Worm’s first troll ever 😦 . Oh well, back to the story. So, I’ve gathered that Satyrical shares a formula with Echidna ( and that other guy ) and Nix with Nyx. And there’s a reason those two have homophonic names. By the way, what’s the connection between Satyr’s power and his name? The only thing I could think of is that satyrs were connected with theatre and that Satyrs sort of creates actors ( wow, that sounded a much better explanation in my head ). Am I close, wildbow, or hilariously wrong? Despite not knowing them much, Exalt in particular, I hope Exalt and Revel are okay. And I hope Weld survived so he can explain what happened to Taylor. I was sad when she felt betrayed by one of the few people that was decent to her. Just one last thing ( ’twas a short chapter) : I have been waiting for a meeting between Glaistig and Nilbog since ,like, forever and when it finally happens we don’t get to hear a single word? Curse you, wildbow, curse youuuuu! 😀 . …..anyone else think Dragon REALLY needs more hugs? You could say that about every sympathetic character. yeah. have to admit, Dragon is one of the characters i probably feel the most sympathy for. when it comes down to it, her life’s pretty much sucked.depending on your definition of the world, she’s been a slave for her entire life, she’s only ever REALLY had ONE close friend (that we know of) and she’s pretty much just been raped, and there’s a very real possibility that if teacher buy’s the farm thanks to zion, she going to pretty much go catatonic….plus, she’s a Dragon AND an Ai, which invokes TWO of the things that get a 10/10 on my personal awesome-o-meter! in all seriousness though, given how strict her original restrictions were, im kinda surprised she didn’t snap, and a imperative to obey/support the current government ignoring anything else (memory is getting fuzzy, 1 am) could backfire monumentally. you know, like the old one with an Asimov robot. telling it that X and X arent humans, but hostile aliens that are a threat to human life, and must be killed to prevent loss of human life. or a villain with long ranged mind control abilities or something with the same effect for all intents and purposes becoming president or some such. not much in the way for wriggle room. that’s pretty much my personal view on safeguards on strong ai. make em too strict, and you completely paralyze it. too week, and good chance it starts to resent them, and..well, its very hard to find a balance, and, to be COMPLETELY fair, an intentional lack of safeguards can be risky, depending on how the ai grows. P.S ooops! sorry for the wall of text. just feel talkative tonight No big. Just try to install windows, shutters, and maybe a nice flowerbox or two before sending. 😉 Yes Dragon needs more hugs. And she needs to give more hugs. Also puppy therapy. Everytime Saint goes on about how she doesn’t really feel things, and it’s just computer coding that simulates emotions I want to dope smack him. I mean what are emotions anyways but a series of Biochemical reactions in the brain? Just because somethings artificial doesn’t mean it’s fake. Dragon needs to be hugged by giant fluffy puppy monsters whose tongues smell like chocolate chip cookies and who crap cupcakes. Surprised this hug isn’t up in Crowning Moment of Heartwarming, along with and as part of Taylor being convinced it’s her. 90%. so am i, some to think of it. how would you describe Dragon’s state of mind ATM? broken bird? shell shocked survivor? one of the Heroic error states? oh, think there’s a chance saint will try something even stupider? lets face it, he intentionally compromised humanity’s coordination in a species wide life-or death situation , with potentially catastrophic results. not much of a leap from that to “eh, i could take both of em” Saint does that to people. I certainly wanted to give him the what-for after he dropped the A-bomb on her. Exalt, Revel, Vantage.. I suppose the question isn’t which of them is the insider, but how many of them. Insert conspiracy theory about Revel being Alexandria’s double who took the formula after they no longer needed an unpowered body double for PRT purposes. And next, a Cauldron dungeon crawl. Not for low level parties. Adult themes, suggested for mature audiences only. Watch the secret formula be “some poor bastard wired into an extraction machine on the fifth floor”. We’ve been theorizing that since we figured out that the “Thinker” entity was Cauldron’s source of dead shards. Except it’s actually the corpse of an eldritch abomination. thehiddensage on September 25, 2013 at 18:16 said: So, just wanted to stop and say this after one very long adventure: DAYUM. I’d been linked to Worm through a discussion on Reddit two weeks ago, and have been tearing away at it ever since. Today was the moment I finally caught up with the current plot. And I mean it as a compliment when I say you write one hell of a doorstopper, Wildblow. The narrative pacing on this work is beautiful. The fact that Worm jumps from crisis to crisis in such a non-stop manner, without ever really feeling overdone, is an incredible feat. I’m almost disappointed that I have to start waiting for the next chapter like everyone else. But seriously, great job, and I can’t wait to see more. Thank you. 🙂 Was wondering when you guys would start turning up in the most recent chapters. I saw that discussion, and am very grateful to Ameteur (sic) for turning so many people my way. Also, haven’t done this in a while, but throwing it out there – reviews or ratings on Webfictionguide would be most excellent, if you’ve genuinely enjoyed the story and want to help spread the word. If you’re not up for signing up for the site, perhaps mentioning the story to friends and/or on forums or other places you frequent? The only way I can continue writing (including possibly doing a sequel) is through growing my audience and through donations from my readers. Anything that spreads hype on Worm is good news to me. You’ve earned the attention. Done and done. Thank you very much. Just put a wide smile on my face. Somebody, get our esteemed author a pink smiley face with a pig’s nose on it! So, wait, is this your first time posting a comment here? Yeah, it is. I’m a new reader, and didn’t want to necro comment threads from the earlier arcs as I read through. Also, stopping to comment would mean delaying the next chapter, and that might be easier said than done. First time commenters usually get a hello from Psycho Gecko. People celebrate it, in a weird way. It just feels weird if he doesn’t. If he misses more than one we start worrying that something has happened to him. I mean he greeted a lot of us, so of course we expect him the greet the fresh meat. Ohh, that’s Gecko? He’s cheating with the two-screen-name thing then. Not fair. If you’re talking about me, I can assure you I’m not Psycho Gecko (unfortunately/thankfully). I was just trying to send out a signal flare for him to bring the usual greetings. …Which probably would have worked if I had actually remembered to turn PG’s signal on. PSYCHOGECKOPSYCHOGECKOPSYCHOGECKOPSYCHOGECKOPSYCHOGECKOPSYCHOGECKOPSYCHOGECKOPSYCHOGECKO Signal worked. Thanks for summoning the good man. And for having just close enough a profile picture to confuse this sorry newb. Negatory, legend of the lost legend, I am Psycho Gecko. The one and only. No two names about it. I’m so unique, there’s not even a version of me to post on the Parahumans Online forums. And ignore them about missing one. If it’s too close to an update I normally get them on the next one, and I still went and covered those excited people who showed up during my regrettable capture in Paradise City. Up there, Wildbow writes the story, but down here, I am your ruler! I am your master! Fear me, love me, do as I say and I will be your slave! Pay no attention to the padding in the tights or how much of it is because Wildbow tolerates me despite not sharing my sense of humor. You’re not the only person to want to cuss after a Worm update, by the way. Happens all the time. I think there was a big long thread of people just going “Fuck” once or twice. Also the occasional “…the fuck just happened?” with some “Shit” thrown in for itself and giggles. Surprisingly, pillars of “fuck” and “shit” were not of my doing. Like I’d do some fucking shit like that. Heh. I said “do”. You won’t see so much of that in the story itself. Plenty of cusswords where they’d be deemed appropriate, but I have yet to see someone drop a cluster of cusswords over something painful. Like if Gavel was trying to put something together and hit himself in the thumb with his hammer. “Ah shit motherfucker ass ball munching gargle fucktard asslicker, I’ll fuck you up the ARGH!” Just imagine how Armsmaster must feel. He’s feeling up Dragon. Hands are getting away from himself. All of a sudden he gets a shock. Zap! “Son of a Hellhound!” You know, I imagine the guy would put a bleeper in. Problem is, it would mess with conversations all the time. “Ok, we need to stop the bleepbleepsins from bleeptinuing their plan to kill people by kidnapping their pet toy dogs. Washington D.C. isn’t letting us live down that time we had to mercy kill that old lady’s little Bleep-zu in NorBleep, Virginia.” These important thoughts and more are waiting for you as you wait for the next chapter with all the rest of us here in the comments. As the unofficial tagline that only I’m still pushing for says: “Worm: Prepare to be skullfucked by awesome.” And allow me to say the phrase that has garnered many an expletive in itself: thehiddensage, welcome to the comments section. You. I like you. You can have my groveling now, since I think Wildblow is satisfied with the review. Don’t worry, you’ll be back to praising Wildbow soon enough. Looks like we’re about to have a bonus donation update. You, sir or madam, are a breath of fresh air after the stench of Axel grease that has cast a pall over these last few comment sections. Welcome to the comments. Rhodesian on September 25, 2013 at 22:40 said: Longtime Lurker here (2.01 when my brother told me about it). Just wondering if we’re going to have a bonus chapter tonight. Surprised you don’t know after all this time, but I note the dates for bonus chapters on the Donate page. ‘Next bonus chapter: Sept 26th’ Generally, if you check the Donations tab beforehand, it’ll let you know when the next Thursday update will be. And yes, by the way, there will be one. Your Gecko will be here to greet you shortly. Fuck my life. Timestamps on old emails are old and false. Statistical Analysis pre-reading: Main players in this chapter (Other than narrator) will be Legend, Dragon, Canary, and Cauldron. Imp will be in it a fair bit too. People/capes will fight with powers. Something definitive will happen. I can’t tell if good or bad. Tattletale will find a way to get Dragon and Canary to do something – using a power in a thought out way. Cauldron group will be there, they know stuff, and want stuff. Legend fights. There will be hand holding, and hand fighting. Fighting wil be from Legend. They say to think, and they say legend a lot. Anyways, now lets read! prionprince on October 16, 2014 at 19:34 said: Why did you change the spelling of Nyx? It was Nyx and now it’s Nix They’re two different (but presumed related) characters. This is covered in more depth earlier in this comments section and I’m too lazy to retype it. 😛 Wow there goes that insecurity thing again. It’s nice to see that Legend at least tells her to shut up and realize that she is badass. Doesn’t seem to really take though…Yamada did not have enough sessions with Taylor at all. I freaking love Legend. He, Weld and Chev are my favorite heroes. Followed closely by Tecton and Dragon/Defiant. Sweet so Dragon does have an actual biological, or at least cyborg body. That is awesome! So D&D can have an actual literal sexual relationship beyond just a mental one. That makes me happy for them. Well, hopefully Colin is still actually interested in sex considering how much machine he now has in his body. It’s also very sweet and heartwarming that Taylor finally thanked D&D and hugged Dragon. Very, very heartwarming indeed. So Taylor just gets done two chapters ago saying how the Undersiders aren’t big leaguers and yet here Legend is chatting with her one on one, Chev and Defiant/Dragon come up to put their two cents in along with Tattletale and everyone pretty much defaults to not only listening to her but actively following her lead, asking for her help and telling her her strong points. How again do you not qualify for the big leagues Taylor? There comes a point when low self esteem turns into active denial and I think she really has hit that point a while back. It’s actually getting a little annoying. She had confidence back during the ending sections of the Skitter blocks and she had determination at least during the Weaver sections. Now it’s like with changing back to “Taylor” she’s reverted back to being the bullied kid who can’t stand up under her own strength and recognize the power there. It’s very frustrating to read. Dude that was awesome watching the quick rundown on why nonTinkers don’t use Tinker stuff. So much that they just take for granted that we can barely process. Bastard LIVES!!!!! YYYYEEEEEESSSSS!!!!!! Sorry. I like the wolf pup. Giving Shadow Stalker a spidersilk design? Sure maybe she’s kinda helping but really? Bitch doesn’t deserve that kind of protection. Wait I missed something…Nix is part of the Vegas group? But Nyx was a member of the S9…Okay after reading through comments above I do see these two as two different characters and knowing that at least some members of the Vegas team had Cauldron powers I’m guessing the Nyx did as well. That being said I sincerely hope that Nix came before Nyx because if it was the other way around and Nix was idiotic enough to name herself after a member of the Slaughterhouse 9 than she’s lucky she’s still among the living. Does Spur seriously think Taylor bluffs? She cut out a man’s eyes, filled another man’s eyes with maggots, killed two PRT directors, rendered Alexandria brain dead, cut Echidna in half, stuck Leviathan in the ass, went to speak with the Simurgh…in what fucked up universe does a little bit of bladed torture/death hold a candle to these things? Even assuming they only believe half, the largest ones are matters of public record to capes. Congrats Spur, you just won another Darwin award. You take Bronze behind Saint’s Gold and Doctor Mother’s Silver. Wasn’t it implied he is a precog,or has the assistance of one?”he spoke with the certainty of a man who can see the future” slider214 on May 3, 2015 at 01:57 said: Who Spur? I don’t think it was implied he was a precog…even if he was, is Skitter/Weaver/Taylor honestly the sort of person you want to try calling a bluff on with her track record? I wouldn’t trust my precog powers around someone like her. There is just too much potential for carnage when there are perfectly legit options that don’t end in testing the unstable killing machine on a mission. I think Satyrical might have just set a record. Gray Boy and Coil were mysterious for a while, but neither of them went six arcs between first appearance and power reveal. Hmm, this might be a continuity error: NILBOG is mentioned as standing around talking to someone. I thought Weaver killed the Goblin King, and even if her attack wasn’t lethal I’d have expected a fuss to be made about someone as powerful and, ahem, crazy as him. I’d also have expected him to have fought and does in the battle if he was supposed to be there. Jack and Bonesaw pulled him out of the ground and took him with them when they escaped Ellisburg via the portal. He shows up later in that arc, in the pocket dimension and then as part of the attack on New York after the 9000 exit it, with Bonesaw having rigged him to produce on demand. As for taking part against Scion- he can make things that can fight; he’s not a fighter himself. Leave a Reply to MisterTeatime Cancel reply	cc/2019-30/en_middle_0059.json.gz/line1802
__label__cc	0.534281	0.465719	Posted on October 8, 2013 by wildbow “Cuff,” I said. I used my bugs to talk. “Can you fix the platform? Make sure the floor is sturdy enough to hold our weight?” “What are you thinking?” Golem asked. “I’m thinking we go straight up, then exit onto whatever floor has the portal.” “There are others inside,” Golem said. “Sveta, Weld, Shadow Stalker… prisoners.” “They can wait,” I said. “There’s a lot of danger there. Sveta especially, if we turn a corner and run into her… We got Doormaker, we got the clairvoyant, we have Number Man, who I’m assuming is willing to cooperate?” “I will.” “We have video footage,” I said. “Of the facility, of the garden, of Scion. Stuff we can get to Tattletale. The sooner we get back, the sooner we can get others up to date, and the better our chances of coming up with a plan before we run out of time. We send PRT squads and capes who can’t help against Scion to recapture Garotte and handle the prisoners.” Golem nodded. “Makes sense.” He and Cuff joined Alexandria in fixing a platform out of the hand we’d hidden inside. Much of Cauldron’s internal structure was gone. We could see a cross-section above, where rooms had been sliced through. The energy of Scion’s beam continued to eat through it, leaving a tracery of gold to cut through the gloom, all the way up to the hole at the top. Maybe two-thirds remained, with the lab and everything essential gone. A hollow husk, and this empty space, like a missile silo open to the world. An overcast sky loomed directly above us, and a kind of breeze reached us, maybe a thousand feet underground. It stirred flecks and fragments from the burned entity and the burned of the walls above into the air, a snowfall of pitch black flakes. “I’m betting this isn’t so safe to inhale,” Imp said. “Bits of alien, bits of… metal ash?” “Closer to soot, I’d think,” Golem said, without turning away from the platform in progress. “It’s essentially human flesh,” the Number Man said. “Given the form the entity took and the research the Doctor did.” “Oh, well then,” Imp said. She took in a deep breath. “That’s okay.” “You joke? Now?” Lung asked. He sounded irritated. “Especially now,” Imp said. “We hit him hard enough it mattered, we made him hurt. Be happy.” Alexandria turned the platform around. We each stepped inside. She hauled us skyward. Imp dropped down to her hands and knees. She saw me looking, meeting me eye to eye. Or lens to lens, anyways. “You can fly. Why are you in here?” “Limited fuel. Does it matter?” “It’s more weight on this floor. If it breaks off, we all fall to our deaths.” “Don’t be a wuss,” Rachel said. “I’m not. Wussiness is being scared about something that isn’t scary. I think it’s perfectly reasonable to have a thing about shoddy constructions and drops from… oh… seventy stories up?” “The Siberian’s protecting the shell,” I said. “Alexandria couldn’t break it if she tried.” “It’s seventy-seven, by the by,” the Number Man said. He was surrounded by his Harbingers, the wounded piled at his feet. “We’ll be eighty-three floors up once we reach the top.” “Here’s an idea,” Imp said. “Let’s change the topic. Like, say, it’s kind of nice to see you returning to form, boss.” “Form?” “Creep factor a thousand. You’re just standing there, and you shouldn’t be upright, with the way your weight is, but you are because of that flight pack, you’re not looking at anyone you talk to, not even opening your mouth. And when you’re talking, you don’t pause for breath or anything and there’s no emotion in your voice. I’d almost think you bit it, and your ghost lives on in the swarrrrmm.” She waggled her fingers as she drew out the last word. “I’m alive,” I said. I made myself raise my head. “Right. But you look dead, and that’s creepy, and that’s good, because creepy reminds me of old Skitter. Old Skitter was cool.” I shook my head a little. Now that things were quieting down, my body was deciding to remind me of the pain in my arm. I focused on my bugs. Searching the area. I didn’t have many, but two bugs floating a foot apart could fly at chest level and run into most people standing in a corridor. A cluster of bugs died, wiped out by lashing tendrils. Sveta made it. There was a crackle, followed by a voice. “…ear me?” “We’re here, Tattletale,” Golem said, raising a hand to his ear. “Kinda got a little spooked there. Long time for radio silence.” “Scion came,” Golem said. “And we spent a bit at the bottom of the complex. On our way back to you.” “And the reason Taylor isn’t talking to me?” “Your teammates are okay,” he said. “Weaver’s a little unsteady on her feet, using her bugs to talk. The mic wouldn’t pick that up.” “Download video,” I said. “Can you download the video?” Golem asked. “Nope. I can watch in on the feed when I have a connection, or I can load the recording when I have the physical camera in my hand, but I can’t download.” “And here I thought Dragon was a good tinker,” Imp said. “It’s a camera the size of a sugar cube,” Tattletale said. “If you’re looking for the portal, you’re almost horizontal to it.” I raised a hand for the benefit of the people without earbuds. “That floor.” “Stop, Alexandria,” Number Man said. “Down a little.” We departed. Rachel and the dogs hopped off at the same time, making the platform swing back a fraction, creating a two-inch gap. I heard a yelp and turned back, but I couldn’t identify the source. Sveta? Another prisoner? “Let’s move fast,” I said. We headed down the hallway. Alexandria had borrowed Cuff’s earbud and microphone and was communicating the basics to Tattletale. Which was fine by me, because it let me focus on more important things, like ignoring the pain and the possibility of attack from any direction. I could recognize the damage on the walls and furniture as we approached the portal. I could smell the salt water and the heavy odor of rotting seaweed on the air. A nostalgic smell, even if it wasn’t the exact same smell as home. I saw Shadow Stalker, too, and in a way, I felt a different kind of nostalgia. Of being a little vulnerable, not at a hundred percent, and suddenly having this person appear, catching me off guard. “You’re here,” I said. “Nowhere else to go. Covered your rear for a bit, but when all hell broke loose, I headed back up this way.” Was she telling the truth? “Satyr bit it,” she said. “Others… I don’t know.” “Others don’t matter,” I said. “Don’t say anything about Satyr for now.” We made our way through the portal, entering the cave. It was unbearably bright, and I was thankful for the Dragonfly’s presence, blocking the worst of the sunlight. “And they’re back,” Nix said, from above us. She was still held against the wall by Golem’s bindings “Fantastic,” Spur answered. “Tell us where the heroes are. No nonsense,” I said. “Fake wall, fake rock, wherever. Talk.” “Let’s hear what you’re offering in exchange,” Nix said. “No,” I responded. I used my bugs to open the Dragonfly’s ramp. “You don’t know that they’re safe,” Spur said. He smiled a little. “If you want to know what happened to Satyr, explain,” I said. “Waste any time, and we leave and send the PRT here to investigate. You won’t get any answers.” “Hard sell?” Spur asked. “Satyr can handle himself.” “Apparently not,” Imp said. Someone elbowed her. I was already turning to float up the ramp. He’s only wasting my time. Trying to buy a moment to figure out a tactic to approach this negotiation. “I know we’re in a rush…” Golem started, as he hurried after me. “But-” “I care about Revel too,” I said. I raised my head to look at him. “But I care about the world more.” I could see Golem’s eyes through the eyeholes in his helmet. A frown. “I’ll stay,” he said. “In case anyone comes through, and so I can search for them.” “Good idea,” I said. I thought about it. “What Satyr was saying… Blowout might have done something to their heads.” “I remember Satyrical saying something along those lines. Stunning presence.” “It’s not a power in the records, not something long-term like this. But it fits. There was a string of people found in Vegas with varying amounts of brain damage. Some permanent,” I said. I could see his eyes widen. “He did? We were interacting with them all that time, and you knew he could have done something like this to Revel? We let them go?” “I’m telling you so you’re prepared,” I said. “The reason we didn’t do anything, the reason you shouldn’t do anything, is because this isn’t a time for grudges, vendettas and revenge. It only sets us back.” “Right,” he said. “But I don’t need to say that,” I said. “You’re not the type to cross the line in pursuit of revenge.” “No,” he said, sighing. “I’m not.” I forced myself to raise my good left hand, and I settled it on his shoulder. The movement, the minor exertion, it made my burned stump throb. “Thank you. For caring about Revel,” I spoke with my own voice, quiet, a little strained. “Makes me feel less guilty about leaving.” “Cuff,” I said. “Stay with Golem? Two of you to watch two of them.” She nodded. “Everyone else, on board,” I said. They boarded. With Dragon active, I didn’t need to get in the cockpit. I could have ordered the A.I. to handle autopilot, with Dragon to keep an eye on things and manage the ship. But I made my way to the chair anyways. I eased myself down, then set everything into motion. I put things on autopilot, and then I fiddled with the search keys until I’d found the video feeds. A chance to sit, to catch my breath. Couldn’t deal with people, and I wasn’t up to any exertion at all, even talking. Talking meant navigating the politics of the group, of taking people into account. I only wanted to distract myself from the pain of the burn, the rough, blackened wound where my arm should have been. I could push through it, but I was counting every second until I had some relief. The feeds showed the three key outposts where the PRT had a presence. The largest settlements that remained, the most obvious targets. There was one in Zayin, but the Sleeper had followed the refugees in there. Even if it still stood after Scion’s visit, there was no helping any of the refugees there. The C.U.I. had seized one settlement for themselves. A problem that needed dealing with, but our window of time for that sort of thing was past. The battle was on. Scion was pissed off. We were his target, and this time he wasn’t letting up. Three settlements, and Earth He was under attack. Western Europe and Northern Africa, minus the English speakers. The Guild, the Suits, the Meisters, more teams I struggled to place in the chaos. Khonsu and Leviathan, and capes I recognized as the ones Cauldron had taken. A whole army. “Dragonfly,” I spoke, using my swarm. “Give the others a view of this.” “Dragonfly,” I said, using my real voice. I hissed in a bit of breath between clenched teeth. “Put this feed on the other monitors.” The other monitors lit up. A cape flung Leviathan. Scion floated to one side to avoid the incoming Endbringer. Leviathan, in response, extended the fins the Simurgh had given him, arresting his forward momentum, and then swam through his own afterimage as it crashed into him, changing direction in mid-air. He crashed into Scion, his fins tearing through the golden man. Golden mist billowed away as Leviathan found a grip on Scion and continued the assault. Leviathan was blasted away, heaved into the ground with a force that made everyone present stumble. Scion then retaliated, striking first the cape that had thrown Leviathan, then Leviathan himself. The Endbringer was clipped, losing a fin on one hand, but he got his feet under him and ran, trailing all of the disintegration fins on and inside the rocky ground beneath him. The mist billowed, Leviathan used it to mask himself from Scion’s view, changing direction the moment he was out of sight. Scion hit him anyways. Leviathan disappeared out of the camera’s view. Scion didn’t let up. His actions before had been slow, methodical. Now there was nothing of the sort. No pause, no break. The moment he couldn’t follow up on Leviathan, he struck others. Capes erected defenses, Dragon’s Teeth dodged and opened fire with laser pistols. Some took shelter behind the pillar that Khonsu had erected. Whatever defensive effect Khonsu had used to wall people inside served to block Scion’s attack. Scion maintained the attack, picking off anyone who wasn’t behind a good enough defense. Blasts, spheres, hundreds of narrow lasers, bigger lasers. Several capes, it seemed, had the ability to transmit a power or a set of powers to others on an epidemic level. I could see how it spread through the crowd, from one cape to the nearest unaffected cape. Masses of individuals erecting forcefields, little circles no broader across than a large umbrella. Alone, the shields were too weak. Together, the shields were still too weak. Scion’s golden lights ripped through the massed rank and file. Two minutes, maybe three or four, Scion finally stopped. All around him, capes were broken. Any who had actually managed to get his attention by being strong enough or problematic enough had been obliterated. The rest had been taken to pieces. Wounded severely enough they were out of the fight, not so severely they would certainly die. Limbs removed, flesh burned, body parts broken by the damage to nearby ground, eyes or whole faces ruined. Dragon’s ships were broken, with a number starting to rebuild and regenerate. The capes who remained were the ones who were behind defenses so secure they couldn’t also attack. There was a pause in the assault. Most of the defending capes had been annihilated. The camera afforded a glimpse of Scion’s face, tinted an orange-red by the forcefield between Scion and the camera. His eyebrows were drawn together, lips just a little tighter together. Lines standing out in his throat. He hadn’t changed his expression once in the time we’d known him. He hit Khonsu’s group. The blast hit the edge of Khonsu’s time effect. Scion threw another, and it passed through. The capes didn’t even have time to react. the light detonated like an artillery shell on impact, tearing through the group. Another soon appeared, to follow. Khonsu teleported, taking the group with him. A whole flight of Dragon’s craft were joining the fray, and reinforcements were arriving. A share of the capes from Gimel. Scion left. And he promptly appeared on another screen. Catching our side off guard, tearing into us with a fresh kind of violence, not experimentally, but out of some form of impotent rage. “He’s angry, like Golem said,” Imp observed. “You could see it on his face.” “Yes,” Number Man replied. “But he’s not demolishing the continent,” she said. “We know he can. So… how come?” “It’s a good question,” the Number Man said. “We can only guess.” “I’m open to guesses,” Imp said. “I prefer to deal with facts,” the Number Man said. “Let’s leave the guessing to your Tattletale.” The other battle was unfolding. Much the same. No, was he hitting harder, here? A little less forgiving? If this was his first time feeling true grief or true anger, then it could be his first time exploring coping mechanisms. Venting through anger. How long until he realized that this wasn’t enough and tried something more severe? I closed my eyes. I wanted to focus, to take in any and all information about Scion that I could, but my body wasn’t up to it. If Panacea wasn’t available, then getting painkillers from the first aid kit onboard would only slow things down when I did get medical attention. Besides, they wouldn’t be strong enough to help here. Had to weather this. Only a few minutes. Deep breaths. I could hear the Number Man with my bugs. “Can’t remember. Was it Bitch or Hellhound?” “Bitch,” Rachel said. “Bitch. Colorful. You know, it’s surprising the things you can survive, if you know the mechanics of movement, of physics and the structure of the human body… you hear about people surviving falls from seventeen thousand feet up in the air…” “Are you threatening me?” “No, no. Not at all.” “Then what are you yammering on about?” “I share Imp’s fears, on a level. We’re a good height above the water, and I can’t help but see a bit of our pilot’s reflection in the window. She looks a little peaked. Would you mind keeping an eye on her, making sure she doesn’t stop breathing?” “I’m okay,” I said. I grit my teeth. “Four or so minutes and we’re there.” “Very reassuring. But maybe-” “She’s fine,” Rachel said. But I could hear the distinct sound of her footsteps and the claw-on-metal-flooring racket as she and her dogs approached. She stood beside my chair, back to the window, and put one steel-toed boot up on my armrest. “Not because of what he said,” Rachel said. Her body faced me, but her head was turned to look out the window. “Keeping you company.” It was appreciated. The craft shuddered slightly as we set down on the roof of the restaurant that had been rendered a makeshift hospital. I was stirred from a daze I hadn’t realized I was in. My eyes roved over the screens, taking in one last glimpse as the ramp opened. Things weren’t much different from before. The defense took a different form, they had Bohu and Tohu with them, and they were reshaping defenses to buy the defenders a little slack. But Dalet had taken heavy losses in an initial attack. There were more people running for their lives than there were people fighting. “The fight’s almost over,” I said. “I said this a moment ago,” Lung said, his voice deep, almost accusatory. Without my asking, Rachel gave me a hand in standing, putting one hand under my left armpit and helping bring me to my feet. I pushed onward, ignoring Lung. “Okay. He attacks this settlement next, probably. Then we find out what his next move is.” “Quite a few dead,” Alexandria said. She was making a habit of surprising me when she spoke. It tended to sound unlike the Alexandria I’d gotten to know in the interrogation room back at the Brockton Bay PRT headquarters. Obviously because she was really Pretender, but that was a hard fact to keep in mind. It was hard to shake my mental image of Alexandria sitting across the table from me. “Yes,” I said. We started making our way down the ramp. The Number Man mused, “It’s very possible he’ll go back to Earth H, start the cycle anew. Or he hits a world or two we’re not in touch with and then hits Earth H.” “Or,” I said, “he realizes that this isn’t serving to vent his anger over what happened to his partner, and he steps up the aggression some.” Gimel was entirely different. Nilbog had been hard at work, creating a horde of minions. Buildings had been reinforced, shored up with shelves of what looked to be obsidian. Capes were gathered in bands, and all were at attention, ready for an attack at any moment. The dead and the wounded, I noted, had been cleared away. The Number Man opened the door leading to the stairwell and the back of the restaurant-turned field hospital. “You’re back, Lung,” Panacea said. “Ah. You’ve got wounded with you.” “Yes,” Lung said. I could see Panacea’s entourage. Marquis, Bonesaw, and Marquis’ followers, minus a few members. A man so tidy he beat out the Number Man in neatness, one with arms black from fingertip to elbow and dyed blond hair teased into spikes. A man so covered in chains and black tattered cloth I couldn’t make out his actual features. They had sandwiches in hand, no doubt put together from supplies that had been shipped in. “Any priorities?” she asked. “Skitter,” Imp said, at the same time I said, “Doormaker.” “Don’t be dumb,” Imp told me. Panacea shrugged, “We can look after two at a time. I can see what happened to Skitter. What’s Doormaker’s wound?” “Traumatic damage to the cranium,” Alexandria-Pretender said. “He’s never been all there, mentally, but we need his brain in one piece.” “The Cauldron capes are tougher,” Panacea said. “Bonesaw? Can you give it a shot?” “Will do,” Bonesaw said. She sounded tired. None of the perkiness or endless cheer that had defined her as a villain. Well, being a good guy was harder, really. I used my flight pack to raise up, then laid flat on the countertop. “Pain relief and essentials only, please,” I said. “Then the others. The Doormaker’s partner, then Gully and Canary. I’ll go last.” Panacea glanced over her shoulder, as if checking that was okay. “Ignore her,” Imp said. “She’s being dumb.” “Most of the others can do more in a fight than I can. They need everything in working order. I can function without an arm.” “Whatever,” Panacea said. “Works for me, actually.” Then she touched me, and the pain went away. I relaxed so suddenly I felt like I’d suddenly become part liquid. I’d been so tense my head wasn’t even touching the countertop, my legs and shoulders tense. “Thank you,” I said. “Thanks.” “You have a high pain tolerance,” she said. “One of Bakuda’s bombs, way back when,” I said. “I think it messed with my head, as far as my perception of pain. I found out what it’s really like to feel pain, real ten-out-of-ten pain. A part of me knew it was too much to be true, and other stuff’s affected me more because I knew it was tied with something real. Case in point, a burn is still a motherfucker.” “Well, we’ll fix it,” she said. I nodded. I was happy to be able to nod. I watched her face while she worked, because there wasn’t much else to look at. A young woman now, not attractive but not unattractive, her face still covered from forehead to chin in freckles, frizzy brown hair tied back with bandanna to keep the hair out of her face. Her shirt had the sleeves rolled up to the shoulders, and I could see blood and smears of black here and there. I felt a pang of envy. She’d been just as lost as me. Maybe more lost, maybe not. I’d had friends, but that didn’t necessarily mean I’d had a rudder. But she’d found herself. She’d found a path and she’d found something she could do. She had a role in this. I looked away. My bugs were stirring throughout the area, as I gathered my forces and replenished my supply. I could sense people outside. Tattletale was among them, laptop tucked under one arm. She reached the door and paused, glancing up at the sky. For an instant, I thought it was because Scion was here. He was due. But she pulled the door open and walked inside. Panacea looked up. I could see her eyes narrow a bit. “You weren’t invited, Tattletale.” “Business,” Tattletale said, waltzing in anyways. “Someone camera me.” There was a clatter as Tattletale unceremoniously dropped the laptop down on a table. Imp was the first to get the camera off her mask and throw it to Tattletale. Tattletale set about extracting a chip. “So. Harbinger zero.” The Number Man made a pained face. “You couldn’t call me Harbinger Ten? Or even Number Man?” “I could. I hope you’ve got some good, juicy tidbits for us to work with, H-zero.” “Very little that’s concrete. This is all very much guesswork.” “Then let’s talk hypotheses,” she said. “Educated guesses.” “Scion’s upset,” I said. “Yeah,” Tattletale said. “His buddy died, I gather?” “Yeah,” Imp said. “And we threw bits of his dead buddy at him to distract him before dropping a skyscraper on him. But I dunno how much that did.” “You accomplish your goal, in the middle of all that?” Tattletale asked. “We found out second triggers aren’t a real possibility,” I said. “Formulas either. But if we want to do the second trigger thing, Contessa should be able to point the way. It could mean extra firepower, or buying time.” “She wasn’t there?” Tattletale asked. “I assumed she was with Khonsu.” “According to the attackers, she died,” the Number Man said. “Mantellum’s power was the rock to her scissors.” “You failed,” Shadow Stalker said. I frowned. She wasn’t entirely wrong. “Our best bet was a special kind of Cauldron formula, and he nuked them. Cauldron let Mantellum slip past their radar, so maybe there’s a chance there’s another Cauldron cape out there who got that special kind of formula, with a game-breaking power. Something that isn’t in Scion’s model.” “Unlikely,” the Number Man said. “Mantellum slipped by us because he had a power that countered perception powers. The sort of power we’d need against Scion would be an offensive one, and I doubt we’d let things slip so badly in vetting those powers.” “You’re a real downer, you know that?” Imp asked. Panacea let go of my stump and walked over to where the Doormaker’s partner was lying. I supposed the essential fixes were done. I checked my stump, and found the burned skin was sloughing off. “Don’t touch,” Panacea ordered, looking at me out of the corner of one eye. I let my hand drop, then sat up. “The biggest thing,” I said, “Was that Scion was wrong. He can see the path to victory, and from the vision we saw, we know that he can make mistakes. He plotted for a future that would be sure to reunite him and his partner… and he got his wish. It was just that his partner was brain-dead, gutted, useless.” “Sooo,” Imp said. “We help him reach a future where he eradicates humanity, trick him, he waltzes away.” “His goal isn’t to eradicate humanity,” Tattletale said. “It’s to destroy most of it. Remember? Dinah never said he’d destroy all of us.” “If you destroy ninety-nine point nine percent of humanity,” the Number Man said, “We’ll die out.” “Probably,” Tattletale agreed. “But he’s not going that far. He’s leaving options open. He’s got one singular purpose. To continue his species’ life cycle. To do that, he needs a partner.” “Can we give him one?” I asked. Tattletale smirked. “Kind of hard to pull off. A lot of bases to cover, and a lot of areas where we don’t have enough info.” “But I’m asking if we can give him one. Can we fake him out, give him what he wants and buy ourselves some breathing room?” Marquis stepped away from the back of the kitchen. He watched as Bonesaw dug through Doormaker’s skull cavity. “It could upset him, more than he’s already been upset. Speaking as someone who recently recovered the thing I want most in the world, the only thing scarier than the idea of losing that thing is the reality of what I’d do for revenge.” “Upsetting him is good,” Imp said. “Right?” “Right,” I said. “He can be affected emotionally. Not by emotion-affecting powers, I don’t think, but he’s influenced by his feelings. That’s good. That’s something we can use.” “You want to irritate the world-destroying alien god,” one of Marquis’ men said. “I want to get him to a point where he might make a mistake,” I said. My eyes moved to Shadow Stalker. It’s how we captured her in the first place. “It’s a starting point.” “Starting points are only that,” Lung said. “I can understand if you would start this with your enemy off-balance, then fight him knowing you can hurt him, but he cannot be truly hurt.” “Tea, anyone?” Marquis asked, interjected. Lung nodded. I raised my good hand. Panacea nodded as well. “Green?” he asked me. “The others drink green.” “Black. With milk.” He turned his attention to the kettle. I looked at Lung, taking a deep breath before speaking. “Not starting this isn’t an option. If we wait until an idea comes up, then we’re going to be too late. We start this, reckless as it may be, and we leave a door open.” “For failure as well as success,” Marquis said, on the far end of the room, his attention on emptying the kettle into the individual mugs. “What would you suggest, then?” I asked. I might have come across a little hostile in the process. “I would counter your question with a question,” Marquis said. “Who do you see on the front lines? Which heroes and villains are still fighting? Which ones keep returning to the battlefield, before any of the others have even found their feet?” I’d thought something like this to myself. “The monsters, the ones that are a little crazy, the ones that are a lot crazy.” “Not quite the answer I would have given,” Marquis said. “Which answer would you have given?” I asked. “I would say it’s the people who are most in touch with who they truly are,” Marquis said. “Same thing,” I responded. “We’re all fucked up, we’re all damaged, a little crazy, a little monstrous.” He frowned a little. “People here might take offense to that. Myself included.” “No offense intended.” “There’s a strength in knowing who you are. I would suggest that everyone play to that knowledge. Reflection, after all, is the province of the old. It’s in your final days that you sum up your experiences, weigh the good against the bad, think back to the pivotal moments, and decide if you’ve made your mark. Others go through this sooner, the terminally ill. Those that expect to die.” “I don’t get it,” Rachel said. “Are you happy with who you are?” he asked. “In a general sense, do you know what you’re doing in the next few hours and days?” Rachel looked at me. “Yeah.” “Is there something in common between those two things?” Bitch made a face, “Kind of?” “That’s what I’m talking about.” There was a distant rumble. A roar rose through the air, a series of shouts and warnings all coming in unison, mingling together into a singular noise. He’s here. It’s unending. The same thing over and over again. Destruction, an enemy we can’t truly beat, always just a little worse than the last time. Rachel left, no question. Imp lingered, but followed, sticking to Rachel like glue. I saw Alexandria, Number Man and the Harbingers go, then Marquis and his followers, Lung excepted. “Hey, Amelia,” Bonesaw said. “Gift wrap this one for me?” Panacea stepped away from the eyeless clairvoyant, touching Doormaker. I watched as the bone at his forehead started to knit together, and was then covered with flesh. He jolted a little, and then sat up. “You were bleeding into your brainpan,” Bonesaw said. “You’re going to feel crummy.” He raised a hand, reaching out, floundering. “Wait, did I fuck him up?” Bonesaw asked. “No, he was screwed up before,” I said. “He’s looking for his partner.” Lung grabbed the Clairvoyant, then staggered a little. It’s based on touch, I realized. I used my bugs to draw a cord out. They wrapped it around one finger and held it straight out to Doormaker. Panacea grabbed it and tugged a little, leading the blind Clairvoyant to his partner. They held hands. Then doors unfolded, throughout my range. Most of the others had left. Tattletale was focused on her laptop, participating in the battle in a sense, even if she was still here. Bonesaw and Panacea, too. They were cleaning the tables, moving things aside and getting organized, preparing for the battle to come. The ones who hadn’t left yet were Shadow Stalker, Lung and I. “Am I safe to go?” I asked. At my question, as if I’d somehow prodded her, Shadow Stalker left. “You can,” Panacea said. “But let me thicken the skin, so your stump doesn’t pop like a water balloon.” “Let’s,” I said. She touched my stump. “I asked to be last for a reason,” I said. She looked up, curious. “You know, what your dad was saying? I kind of wish he’d finished. I feel like I was on the brink of coming to a conclusion.” The sounds outside were getting worse. Doormaker opened a portal beside us. Safety? It was something to do. I helped the others lead the patients through. Lung carried two of the wounded Irregulars. We entered a cave with a very flat bottom, open to the elements. A nice day, so different from the chaos and ugliness that was in New Brockton Bay. “My dad and I have talked about this a good bit. Why?” “I dunno. Finding our role, finding our place? Lung and I are the only ones who haven’t left or started preparing for the fight. Well, us and the wounded. The others know where they’re at. Even Imp, without any power that can really do something, is out there with Rachel, giving guidance. But Lung and I? We’re both pretty proud individuals, and we don’t have a role in this. Like Lung said, he can’t attack Scion until this is over.” Lung had brought the last few through. All of us settled out of the way of the portal door, in case a beam came blasting through. “I have a job. I will protect these girls.” “I think you know what I mean. You’re pissed, on a level, because you’re not a part of all of this. You’re better than this job you’ve been given.” He folded his arms, but he didn’t disagree. “There’s a psychiatric term for this,” Bonesaw said. “Projection.” “No. Skitter is right,” Lung said, looking irritated. “I am more than a bodyguard.” Reinforcements were arriving at the outskirts of the settlement, using Doormaker’s doors. “I feel like I’m on the brink of finding where I need to be,” I said. “I sort of have the power to act, I sort of have a role. I can communicate, I can scout, I’m versatile enough to combine my powers with others. I can figure out ways to attack, I can brainstorm. But something’s missing. Like Lung says, I feel like I’m better than this. What Marquis was saying struck a chord.” “Think back to the time in your life when you were strongest,” Panacea said. Not a time when I had the Dragonfly or the flight pack. It was when I was fighting the Slaughterhouse Nine, Alexandria, Defiant and Dragon. “Times when you were most scared,” she said. The same times. “I think those are the times when you’re most like you. And it sucks, I know. It’s horrible to think about it like that, because at least for me, it wasn’t a time when I liked myself. Just the opposite.” “But you came to terms with it.” “I owned that part of me,” she said. “And I can barely look Carol and Neil in the eyes, because of it. But I’m secure in who I am, and I can do this. Healing people, being a medic for the people fighting on our side.” The image I’d seen on Glenn’s computer screen crossed my mind. Me, unrecognizable even to myself, surrounded by the swarm. I’m just a little bit of a monster, I thought. I can’t put the blame on my passenger. I exhaled slowly. I could hear the Simurgh’s screaming. “Will you help me?” I asked. “Help?” Panacea asked. “Imp reminded me of a moment. Of something Bonesaw said, when she was carving into my head. A threat. That she was going to mess with Grue’s head, take away his ability to control his power. She was going to do the same to me.” “I think I know what you’re thinking,” Bonesaw said. “Even if I did anything there, it’d probably fuck up your head.” “I haven’t done anything in that department, but I’ve gotten enough glimpses to guess you wouldn’t come back from it,” Panacea said. “No fixes, no patching it up. It’d be like trying to plug a leak with water gushing out full force.” “Second triggers are about knocking down walls,” I said. My eyes fell on Bonesaw. “Removing restrictions the entity put in place. If this part of the brain is a part that the entity shaped to help regulate powers on our end, then I need you to de-regulate.” “If it was that easy, I would’ve done it for all the other members of the Slaughterhouse Nine.” “I’m not thinking it’s easy,” I said, my voice quiet. Some capes came through. They brought two wounded through the portal, laying them out on the flat rock floor beside us. Panacea and Bonesaw bent down, getting to work. “Give me a minute and I’ll try,” Bonesaw said. She was patching up a cape that had been disemboweled. She looked over her shoulder at Tattletale, who had set up in a far corner. “But I gotta say, I’m giving you a ninety-nine percent chance of coming out of this with regrets. Maybe you should run it by Tattletale, there?” I looked back at Tattletale. “You’re going to lose your mind. Maybe a little, maybe a lot. Maybe all at once, maybe in pieces. Depends on how it all reconnects in the end,” Bonesaw said. “Tattletale would stop me,” I said. “She’d…” See it as something self-destructive, suicidal. I shook my head a little. “…No. Keep her in the dark, for the time being. Let her focus on what she’s doing.” “Okay,” Bonesaw said. “She’s going to figure it out pretty fast, though.” I saw Panacea fidget. She was kneeling by Canary. “Riley,” Panacea said. Bonesaw looked at her… whatever Panacea was to her. “I’ll handle it.” “You don’t do brains.” “I’m inexperienced, yeah,” Panacea said. “But even inexperienced, I think I can do a cleaner job than you. And Tattletale’s less likely to catch on if you aren’t sawing Taylor’s skull open.” “I wasn’t talking about experience,” Bonesaw replied. Panacea stared down at her hands, covered in tattoos, with a rich, vibrant red in the gaps. “This isn’t a solution,” she said, without looking up. “You said a second trigger wouldn’t work. This is… it’s so crude you couldn’t even call it a hack job.” The Simurgh’s screaming continued. Dinah had left me two notes. The Simurgh had reminded me of the second. ‘I’m sorry.’ It wasn’t an apology for the consequences of the first note. No, Dinah hadn’t approached me since. She hadn’t decided I’d fulfilled the terms and deemed it okay to finally contact me again. Two words, telling me that something ugly was going to happen. Directed at me. There was a chance that it meant I’d lose someone, or I’d lose something precious. Maybe it referred to my friends. Maybe it referred to my mission, my direction. My dad, perhaps, which might have already happened. But there was a possibility that it referred to me. That it was tied to our ability to come out ahead at the end of all this. To some slim chance. Maybe there was a sacrifice involved. I shook my head, unable to articulate any of the arguments, to come up with something profound to say. I only said, “Do it.” Panacea laid her hand across my forehead. And it all went wrong. This entry was posted in 29.9 by wildbow. Bookmark the permalink. wildbow on October 8, 2013 at 00:01 said: Thanks, guys, for reading. Last chapter of the arc. No bloody idea what I’m doing for an interlude. A reader pointed out a bad pattern I’d been falling into and it was a really good heads up. It restructured how I wrote the end of this arc, and extended it by roughly three chapters. I’m glad it did what it did, storywise, but it also took that general maybe-sorta rough outline I had in my head, as far as how this arc and the start of the next would go, and it nuked it. So I feel like I’m on shakier ground, and again, no idea what I’m doing interludewise. There’s no bonus chapter this Thursday. I’d love to do one, and I’m more disappointed than any of you, but I’m traveling, so it’s not easy to pull off. In similar circumstances, I’ve pulled all nighters to get chapters done in the past, but those same circumstances led to what I feel is the weakest arc. I don’t want to do that at this juncture. Thanks for reading guys. Your votes on Topwebfiction continue to be appreciated, as does your continued reading. As an aside, I’m amazed by how the readership is growing. Like, ‘Is this real life?’ amazed. Easier to show than tell: http://oi42.tinypic.com/2nq73hh.jpg Now for the end of Taylor’s story. theant87 on October 8, 2013 at 00:45 said: The End is near. NOOOOO! Archmage9885 on October 8, 2013 at 00:54 said: I’m still hoping for a Glaistig Uaine interlude. crosses fingers Psycho Gecko on October 8, 2013 at 01:52 said: Is that views or visitors? Nevermind, I think I found that part. Was comparing. Views. Don on October 8, 2013 at 14:25 said: That said views per day. That can’t be right. 27k views per DAY? Average, but yes. anonymus on October 9, 2013 at 09:59 said: what was the highest views per day you ever had? Rika Covenant on October 9, 2013 at 17:34 said: How many came through from BillyVsSnakeman, if any? I set a record high of 113 average a day for September. So…um…woohoo? sets off a bottle rocket that sputters, flies up, drops to ground level, zooms around in a circle, then explodes. monotone Yay. agreyworld on October 17, 2013 at 08:03 said: I love comparing too, what fun! 27k a day… Crazy Rule #1 of (mostly) retaining sanity: Do not compare your stuff to Worm. Do not compare your number of hits to Worm, do not compare your word count to Worm. That way lies tears and a deep bucket of ice cream. And not in a good way. There’s always room for growth but 113 is a respectable number. For me that would be “Woo! A bunch of people beyond my immediate friends and family are reading this! \o/” territory… What makes you think I have immediate friends and family reading me? No, what I have are a bunch of people finding me through some very odd search terms. how do i find you? oh, i tried looking and i think that worked. Psycho Gecko at World Domination in Retrospect is generally the place to hunt me down. Plus, there should be a link there from the side around here. Philippe Saner on October 8, 2013 at 06:27 said: Wow. That is some pretty steep growth. overpoweredginger on October 8, 2013 at 09:20 said: If you need an idea for an interlude, you could do one from Grue’s perspective while he and Cozen are at that cabin-thingy. I think I bitched about this in a comment somewhere, but Grue hasn’t done much in a while, I’d l like to learn more about Cozen, and it would be a good chance to fill in some information via flashback about what happened in Brockton Bay in Taylor’s absence. Grue’s perspective’s already been done; that time when Imp orchestrated the home date between him and Skitter. Cozen, on the other hand… I want to say something, but I feel like it might be a spoiler. But if you go back and re-read last chapter or so, Aisha says “and my brother” then stops. Consider that. Qwerty on October 8, 2013 at 09:32 said: If we have a “flashback” interlude, can we see Mouse Protector? My favorite character that almost doesn’t exist in the story Hey now, you’ve gotten to see Mouse Protector a whole lot as that rat thingy running around when they fought the Slaughterhouse. Yep, Mouse Protector, perpetually melded to her nemesis. demoscat on October 10, 2013 at 01:15 said: Why is it when I see “Mouse Protector” I think of a mouse in a chastity belt? Because you’re a perverted cat and you better wash those paws before touching me. You take “playing with your food” a little far, don’t you? That’s a mighty twitchy tail you have there Gecko. It keeps flicking back and…. Whoa! There is goes again! Hmm. Twitchy tail…. [Eyes dilate] Oh Control, there’s two of them. Requesting immediate evac from this timeline. Readying antiplanetary strike. It’s kinder than the alternative. If / stayed, there’s a good chance of something unprecedented. AMR on October 8, 2013 at 10:22 said: Since people have already suggested some possible interludes, something i was a bit leery (or cowardly, if you prefer 🙂 ) doing, may I propose Pretendria? So we can get some background on the Vegas capes and maybe understand what the hell Satyr was hinting about? Pretendria’s been done too, sadly. During the Behemoth aftermath chapter. Patrick Reitz (@dreamfarer) on October 8, 2013 at 11:05 said: Oh look, seven words that are even more gut wrenching than the five that this chapter ended with. Bravo for nuking your plans for how the arc would go too! That takes courage and, from what we’ve seen so far, you do some amazing work when you really challenge yourself. I am so looking forward to what’s left to come, whatever it may be. negadarkwing on October 8, 2013 at 13:28 said: Actually I’d kinda like an arc for Taylor’s shard/agent/passenger right about now that she’s fucking with the connection to it. Be interesting to finally find out just what it thinks. >>Now for the end of Taylor’s story<< Man, I just noticed that. I joined the comments sections with the chapter just before Cody's interlude, after a week or so of archive binging. Back then I had no idea when Worm would have ended but even now, when I knew we were at the closing stages, it still seemed far away. Oh we'll, I guess you can't escape the inevitable, can you? I can't say I'm not sad, but at the same I'm curious what other fabulous stories wildbow's wondrous imagination and creativity can offer. Thank you for this fantastic journey, wildbow. Thanks, AMR. I’m terrified and excited and terrified for what comes after. Will they like it? Will it work? How many readers are going to leave and never come back? Am I going to be able to pull it off? Spooky. Asmora on October 8, 2013 at 18:33 said: I, for one, will be here. At this point, I have more faith in you than possibly any other writer alive. I’ve seen your stumbles and your recoveries. I’ve seen you learn lessons. I’ve seen you improve and continue to improve. I’ve seen you deliver the fucking goods. You could tell me that your next project is a non-fiction study of the economic history of Papua New Guinea, and I’d buy it. Even if it sucked, I’d probably buy the next thing, too. Now I just need you to change your name to Neel, so that you, Neil Gaiman, and Neal Stephenson can be the trifecta of the best contemporary writers in the world and all spell your name differently. WyldCard4 on October 9, 2013 at 00:08 said: Personally I am extremely excited for Worm’s sequel and very optimistic. I think one of the biggest problem for nearly every long running web serial I’ve encountered is the lack of an ending. I love the idea of seeing what else you can do. Making the transition to something else, even if I don’t like it as much as Worm, is something I would find very impressive. I will definitely be sticking with you after Worm. Random aside, the several comments by “Royal Flush” were me. I was doing something else on another blog and this carried over for some reason. Ethan on October 8, 2013 at 21:31 said: You were only getting a few thousand readers a month the first half-of this year?! That’s BS. Getting tens of thousands of visitors should have been the norm for this story for a while now. Well, hopefully it will pay off when you release this thing in novel form. I’m hoping that will give you enough money to live off for quite a long time. pidgey on October 8, 2013 at 23:39 said: No. A few thousand readers per day. It’s now up to a few tens of thousands of readers per day. the13thversifier on October 8, 2013 at 23:23 said: 27k view a day. I’d say you earned it the hardest badass possible way, almost 3 years in progress, every chapter got their own snicker-snack edges of cliff hangers, but that was all good U are simply awesome Royal Flush on October 9, 2013 at 00:05 said: Obviously any statements on what interlude would be good should be taken with a grain of salt given you know a lot more about the characters than the readers do. Also, almost all of the great interludes I wanted have been written. Glaistig Uaine would be awesome and everyone wants it. Sadboy interlude would be awesome. We’ve all been intrigued by him since we pieced together the odd apparent connection with Gray Boy. I am not entirely opposed to an interlude that reveals absolutely nothing about what happened to Taylor. I think it would be interesting whether or not the common fan theory that he is Gray Boy is correct. Sveta might work, but it seems a bit too close for that given we just had so much of her. I like the idea of a Sleeper interlude, but I think that would fit best as the last interlude or epilogue of Worm. Admittedly, we know almost nothing about him, but from what we do know it feels right. Mantellum, the Custodian, and Doormaker or his counterpart all would seem like great interludes from my perspective. I kind of like the idea of more information on Cauldron. We probably have about as much Endbringer as we should have at this point. We already got the alien perspective reveal at the right time, and you manipulated the perspective enough that you’re probably saving Simurgh for something. I think a Manton/Siberian chapter would be awesome, but I kind of think that would work best later. For example, in the possible Worm interludes for a story that doesn’t have interludes within the setting. Similarly I would like an interlude for a relatively sympathetic clone of the Nine. My main “wishlist” was mentioned back when we took the major time skip forward. These are all just ideas that strike me as really cool. Ainix on October 9, 2013 at 09:39 said: Would be interesting to get in Glaistig’s head. I’d really like to know how she’s been getting on (and finally understand her cryptic hints). I hadn’t thought about Manton/Siberian, but that would be nice too (no rush though). Also the sympathetic Nine clone (preferably of Mannequin but I’m not sure if there are any left. Plus, he might not have the same memories.). AliceAce on October 9, 2013 at 16:01 said: I think it would be cool to see the partner/garden/Eden’s point of view. Find out why it was saying everything was ok before dying. And then there would probably be some sort of dramatic reveal of something that blows all our minds, which happens a lot. Unrelated, but this is my first comment, despite being a lurker since sometime before Coil was killed, I think. (I don’t have a good sense of time.) But a long time for sure. I tore through the archive like a wild animal. I LOVE this series, and at the end of practically every chapter I expect the comments to consist entirely of ‘HOLY FUCKING SHIT X JUST HAPPENED AAAAHHHH’ or just ‘AAAAAAHHHHHHHHH’ because that’s like all I can think (I get worked up reading. People look at me funny because I’ll like laugh or scream out loud while sitting somewhere reading.) The chapter where the red mist sets in comes to mind. ‘Hey! Don’t swear.’-Bonesaw ‘AHHHHHHHHHHH’-me. And then I see all this like calm discussion and I’m like ‘How can you even talk with your brains ON THE WALL BEHIND YOU BECAUSE THEY WERE JUST BLOWN WITH THE STRENGHT OF A THOUSAND SUNS!?’ lol. Strength. Damnit. anonymus on October 10, 2013 at 09:26 said: gecko where are you, you need to say hi^^ We sorry. All of our Gecko’s are currently busy serving other customers. Your comment is important to us. Please stay on-line, and your comment will be handled in the order received. (30 seconds of Muzak) It hasn’t been completely unusual lately for people to have a line of comments going, “FUCK” or even “Shit just happened?”. Potty mouths, you know. Careful with that fucking swearing! But still, people are used to getting their brains blown around here. puts on his special gray-colored lipstick* I do good business on Tuesdays and Saturdays. Thursdays are iffy. And not even the Sentry could stop me from showing up here to blow yours too. I blow so hard, you’d think I was a spiny poisonous animal that inflated myself. Blowfish? No thanks, I hate the taste of seafood. I leave blowing fish to Kanye West. Don’t worry, that’s just a joke you don’t get. You’re about to think you’ve hit the Slaughterhouse 9’s secret weed stash down here with us in the comments, because you’ve hit the Jackpot. Contest void where prohibited, winner must wear a thong with at least 5 different colors on it, no pets allowed to play unless shaved. You want to know where shaved ice comes from? Frosty the Snowman wanted to stop by and say “hi”, that’s where. And so, like one of my favorite Robot Masters, I must hold your attention for a couple scary seconds, then run. RIP, Flashman. Cops always seem to catch on before I go wandering in a coat as Woodman, though. Welcome, AliceAce, to the comments. lizzyjean on July 13, 2014 at 21:37 said: I SERIOUSLY like that idea of future Worm interludes for stories that don’t have interludes within the setting. Just think of all the wonderful little interludes we could enjoy far into the future 🙂 Glastig Uaine killed Gray Boy. Sadboy was almost certainly a different character, mentioned in Ms. Yamada’s interlude, and like Saint of the Dragonslayers he had a name that sounded quite interesting, even if he wasn’t. Jurily on October 9, 2013 at 15:35 said: I’d attribute a decent chunk of new readers to the Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality community. It’s popped up quite a few times in /r/hpmor recently, and even the author mentioned Worm in a progress update. chrnno on October 9, 2013 at 17:30 said: Spacabattles is probably the main one though, the sheer number of fanfics people are writing means a lot of people got curious about it. Spacebattles* dammit, stupid misspellings everywhere. Have you considered an Imp interlude? I don’t think we have had one yet, and she would be an ideal character to have find out and explain things. It could also be downright fun to write, with all the non-interactions she might have. How many times do people sit in her lap, for example? Was she taking college classes for free by just sitting in on them, invisible, and that’s where the new vocabulary is coming from? A SAT / GED high school equivalency course? We already had an Imp interlude. During the S9 arc. She infiltrates the nine, tries to kill Bonesaw and gets caught by Cherish. Nick on October 10, 2013 at 07:20 said: Gotta say man, loving the series. I just started reading around a couple of weeks ago and have been plowing through the arcs with every bit of free time that I have. Amazing stuff – you’ve got me hooked; can’t wait to see what happens to Taylor…I’m anticipating some crazy power that allows Taylor to control all the capes like she does bugs…or perhaps she gets control of the Endbringers instead of capes? Anyway, whatever you do I’m sure it’ll be awesome 😀 Keep on doing what you’re doing! That chart is the new screensaver for my iPad, because who needs inspirational quotes when you have THAT. Awesome. Very happy for you and everyone who has found this story. 🙂 As for the ending line, I at first thought, “Oh, so it’s the beginning of the end. Only a few more arks left, just like I sadly knew…” But, reading other comments, is…the next ark the last? I’m equal parts overjoyed and horrified. I’m sure the face I’m making in public right now will have people asking if I’m having a stroke pretty soon. What was the comment the Reader made regarding your “bad pattern” Burned of the walls –> wut? Needs some better wording Period missing somewhere, a stupid paste deleted the sentence One more I missed here, same as the last one frizzy brown hair tied back with bandanna –> a bandanna And this needs to be in typo thread. Fuck my life. Notes on October 8, 2013 at 00:12 said: It’s almost as if you’ve been practicing cliffhangers multiple times a week for years. DvorakQ on October 8, 2013 at 00:19 said: Trusting on October 8, 2013 at 00:23 said: damn I both love and hate you for the cliffhangers Wildbow ! 🙂 ❤ Me too. They’re simultaneously the best and the worst parts. Five words for one hell of a gut punch there. Once again, Saturday cannot come soon enough! Tuesday actually,if Saturday is an interlude. But yeah. Have you seen the kind of things that happen in Interludes? I’m never making the mistake of discounting those again! Ronin on October 8, 2013 at 00:33 said: That about sums it up. Maybe I should just get drunk and stay drunk until Friday night to make it all go by faster….. farmerbob1 on October 8, 2013 at 08:08 said: I believe that it’s pretty much required in webfiction that is serial in nature, built on small chunks, that endpoints have to either be a cliffhanger, or at least end with a bang. In a larger work that a reader has access to all at once, having a entire chapter devoted to backstory is fine. The interludes here act in this way to some degree, the ends of interludes aren’t always cliffhangers because they don’t tie into the main story directly. They answer questions though, and frequently create a lot more questions, which is interesting. So I guess the thing here is that in webfiction, short chapters, frequently written, one needs something, a hook, at the end of every chapter, to keep people’s attention. Cliffhanger, OMFG moment, questions answered that just create more questions. Something to keep the readers thinking about Worm while they wait for the next part of the story. Is this self evident? I know my way around writing, but I don’t know diddly about writing as relates to human psychology. I’m wondering if Wildbow designs chapters so there is always a hook because that’s just their style, or if it’s consciously decided that there will always be a hook. Or perhaps it both in some combination? Well, whatever it is, keep it up Wildbow! Every time I write, I’m analyzing the individual components. What does this sentence, this paragraph, this scene, this chapter, give to the reader? What do they want to see, what do they need to see? I don’t really focus on it, but it’s sort of a thing you always keep an eye on, like a hockey player might try to remain aware of the other players on the ice, even as their eye is on the puck. If I write for a stretch and I’m losing interest in what I’m writing, or if it’s not coming to me, if I don’t feel like I’m answering a question the audience has, raising a new question they’ll be interested in or moving the story forward in an interesting way, then it feels wrong. I back up and tackle it from a new angle. At the start, I paid attention to cliffhangers. What do I need to do to bring my audience back 3-4 days from now? Unanswered questions, unresolved tension, unresolved story elements, scenes cut off, characters they care about being left in dire straits… I suspect Farmerbob is cribbing my mini-essay from somewhere, but I’ve talked in the past about how vital cliffhangers are to an ongoing serial. You’ve got the entire internet to compete with. If I go too long without hooking my reader, then I’ll start to lose some to that siren call and the glittery lights of the web’s three point seven billion websites. If I stop writing and take a vacation, same. It’s not even a big thing – I could write a perfectly good story, and there are still people who’d disappear for a little while and then lose the address or not quite care enough to go hunt for it. Anything that gets people thinking about the story in the times between updates is going to make it easier to retain readers (which is way easier than replacing readers.) Maybe that sounds manipulative. It is. But it’s a good kind of manipulative, because it’s the manipulative that’s based around being compelling and telling a good story. It’s the sort of manipulative that has me updating religiously, because making reading the story a part of people’s weekly routine is going to retain readers through the rough patches (crummy webcomics and sunday newspaper comics have retained readers over time just because they’re so consistent, so what happens when a good work stays consistent. But that’s going to ensure you guys get what you want when you want. It’s a good balance and it’s a balance that leaves you guys and leaves me happy in the end. Mostly. I do hear the lurkers screaming for my blood in the streets… Heh, Wildbow, I’ve never read any article you have written about how you write, other than the dribs and drabs that happen within the commentary at the end of each writing installment, but I wouldn’t mind being able to do so. Links? But from what you said here, it seems that you had to guide yourself to putting hooks at the end of each installment of the story when you started, but over time it’s just become part of what you do because you trained yourself to do it that way 🙂 Oh, it was just dribs and drabs. I post on reddit occasionally. If you’re interested, I posted here in response to a guy who was saying he’s been worldbuilding for a while and he’s wondering about starting the writing part. I’ve seen a lot of people like this, who love the worldbuilding but keep putting off the actual writing. And it never happens. I think it’s very common. Aye I’ve been thinking about starting up my own little project where I try to make the story interactive with the readers. Something like the old “make your own adventure” books like the “Lone Wolf” series from a couple decades ago before computer gaming got so much gaming market share. Not collaborative, but reader-guided, and there would be only one story option, but the end users would get to choose it. The problem with that is that you need an audience to answer polls. It also means that you have to have interesting polls. This would allow me to write smaller bits, not fully self contained with a hook, because the polls would potentially be hooks to keep the readers around. As you said, there are lots of people who have done some world building but have never actually done anything with their ideas. I’m one of those people. You’ve actually pulled me out of my writer’s shell and let me stick my big toe in the water with a few chapters of Fanfic based on Worm, so my little idea might actually happen. So I thank you for the potential here 🙂 Meh, ” Not collaborative, but reader-guided, and there would be only one story option, but the end users would get to choose it.” ” Not collaborative, but reader-guided, and there would be only one storyline, unlike the old choose-your-own-adventure books, but the end users would get to choose it as I write it.” Gryllidae on October 8, 2013 at 23:01 said: Sounds like a type of play by post game really. There are websites dedicated to that kind of thing, Aye, but from what I’ve seen those are far more interactive than what I’ve been thinking about. I’m thinking something like: Option: character is planning an operation. Plan for the operation using subtlety, aggression, or misdirection? Then write the next bit based on reader input. Don’t ever give control of the characters, just allow the readers to guide the flow of the story. Something like the Roman Emperor in his booth at the Arena – thumbs up, or thumbs down? dbdatvic on December 2, 2017 at 02:46 said: This has been done from the World of Warcraft forums. Sadly, the actual forum thread involved can’t be seen any longer, but the result is archived as “You awaken in Razor Hill”, at, currently, thelittlestmurloc.tumblr.com . It gets awesome. –Dave, and the main character and his pet have been incarnated as NPCs in the game greatwyrmgold on October 8, 2013 at 08:47 said: And there are so many ways this could go. Taylor could be game-breakingly powerful. Taylor could be powerless. Taylor could be insane in ten-thousand-plus different ways. Two or even all of these could be true. It might even be something completely different. And now I need to wait a week to find out, assuming no bonus interludes… You know what excites and titillates and fucking terrifies me? The likelihood, given Wildbow’s track record, that it will be NONE of those things. That it will be something I never could have guessed. That he has manipulated my expectations to lead me to certain assumptions, certain guesses, just to set me up to be floored by what he’s had planned all along. Hey guys, I have an idea! Why don’t we alter our brains in a suicidally risky and permanent way while the Smurf is singing in the background! What could possibly go wrong, right? Well, considering the alternatives are “Ask someone else to do something like this” or “Let Scion continue beating us like he has been,” this was about the best terrible choice. thewatcherbehind on October 8, 2013 at 00:12 said: Darn it wildbow. Why do you kill me with these cliffhangers? Also, long time lurker (since drone), first time poster. Really enjoyed the ride so far, and I love the way its wrapping up. Gecko Signal? You better watch your behind, thewatcherbehind. Because you’re hanging, and you know what’s back there? A cliff. Say hi, Cliff! Shut the fuck up, Cliff! Alrightdiddly ighty then, tighty whitey. You’ve posted. You are out of the dark. You know longer lurk, like a dark, brooding figure on the gargoyles of this city. Dead dog in alleyway. Burst stomach. Pus and scabs and hookers. No, now you’ve joined us down below. Brought into the limelight for at least one short moment in time. Just think of me as the ultraviolet radiation. I can burn you worse than Minnie the Moocher, and I look good in extreme purple. Also, hot women like me all over their bodies, or so I’ve been told. That part could have been made up about what happens when I get drunk. But tanning causes premature aging. Butt tanning does too, but that occurs more when you’re flying by the seat of your pants. So you have a choice now. You can stay here, take that limelight, maybe use it to help make a margarita. Perhaps put it in a coconut and drink them both up. Because when life gives you lime, you know what you do? You make lemons. Or, you can go back to your lurking ways. The choice is yours now, Planeteers. But the power’s still mine, bitches. But for my part, I’m here to say, thewatcherbehindyou, welcome to the comments section. Naeblis on October 12, 2013 at 04:32 said: Heh, PG’s welcome messages are probably my favorite part about Worm. Charles Borner on October 8, 2013 at 00:13 said: Typos for the Typo Thread Gods! yinyangorwuji on October 8, 2013 at 00:14 said: our pilot’s reflection in the window. She looks a little . Would you mind keeping an eye on her, making sure Pinkhair on October 8, 2013 at 01:33 said: “I could see the spread because I could see how it spread through ” Kinda awkward. “ten-out-of-ten pain.. A” Missing period in the ellipsis. “Myself included”” Missing period. Olivebirdy on October 8, 2013 at 03:23 said: It stirred flecks and fragments from the burned entity and the burned of the walls above into the air, a snowfall of pitch black flakes. Either awkward, or word missing, … or something. edit nevermind, just got it. Mantellum’s power was the rock to her scissors.” Missing a quotation mark. peter o on October 8, 2013 at 03:53 said: At the first mention of scion’s attack in the Dragonfly, you mention Earth He, then call it earth H the raft of the conversation. I’m guessing that Earth H is an abbreviation, but for He that makes little sense in writing and less in conversation. AlsoSprachOdin on October 8, 2013 at 07:38 said: “my body was deciding to remind me of the pain in my arm.” – are we supposed to read that as phantom pain? Or is it the other, still intact (?) arm? not sure if I should put this here, but: “creating a two-inch gap” could stand some elaboration: gap between what? Two inch gab from the chosen floor? Kat. on October 8, 2013 at 08:03 said: Missing speech marks. “’But I don’t need to say that,’ [Taylor] said. ‘You’re not the type to cross the line in pursuit of revenge.’” Should that be italicized, or is Taylor using her own voice again? r2k-in-the-vortex on October 9, 2013 at 14:40 said: frizzy brown hair tied back with bandanna David Guild on November 8, 2013 at 11:11 said: The last line should read, “I doubt he’d let things slip so badly”. “The mist billowed, Leviathan used it to mask himself from Scion’s view, changing direction the moment he was out of sight.” Either put an “and” after the comma or switch “used” with “using”. “It’s very possible he’ll go back to Earth H, start the cycle anew. Or he hits a world or two we’re not in touch with and then hits Earth H.” Shouldn’t that be Earth He? Or has the Number Man been referring to them by English letters instead of Hebrew ones? chair on June 22, 2014 at 14:11 said: “I owned that part of me,” she said. “And I can barely look Carol and Neil in the eyes, because of it. Should be Mark instead of Neil, assuming Manpower is still dead. It’s a shame Golem isn’t more revenge oriented. He might have killed Jack before anything happened. And finally, OHGODDAMNITCLIFFHANGERS! RazorSmile on October 8, 2013 at 00:27 said: No. He wouldn’t have. Because of Jack’s fucking Lecter-sense. Oh yeah, that’s right. Hacks. How would he have? Remind me of the time when Theo or Golem could have killed Jack Slash. At their showdown… It was a small chance, but if Theo had been more interested in revenge, it could have helped. You talking when they first met or during their climactic duel that was interrupted when Jack got bored? Because, funnily enough, the first time they met, Theo had actually more of a chance (as in 0.00000002% as opposed to 0.00000001%) of beating Jack than Purity, what with normal humans being his kryptonite. Once he became Golem he could never defeat Jack, no matter how motivated. That’s a good point, actually. I was thinking the bored one. Didn’t Jack have that big claymore thing? Besides, better heroes than Golem with greater tendencies towards vengeance have tried and failed to kill Jack Slash. They all failed. I don’t think he have them the opportunity. But it was always a very small chance. A chance that would not be made greater by Golem being the grudge-keeping vengeful kind. Golem had enough reasons to kill Jack without that. There’s no limit to how much you can want to kill someone. There is, however, a limit to how much that affects your ability to kill someone. Especially wen that someone managed to avoid being killed by far stronger people, with far weaker forces and slightly inferior weapons. I think the point is that since Jack has a power that literally makes him unbeatable as long as he’s fighting parahumans, it wouldn’t have changed a thing. I’m not sure Jack was literally unbeatable. He fought better than he should have been able to due to the way his passenger interacted with other passengers. That gave him a huge edge in avoiding their attacks and manipulating them. If someone had understood that though, they might have been able to use that against him. Even Countessa and the Siberian didn’t turn out to be unbeatable after all. While I may have indulged in a bit of hyperbole, I think it was more than just receiving broadcasts from other people’s shards. Remember what happened with Purity? Purity is a slightly less powerful version of Legend. There’s no way Jack, without Siberian nearby, could ever beat Purity. Yet the moment Jack opens his mouth and tells her “yo, Purity today is a cloudy day so you’d lose against me”, Purity is all “ok, you’re right”. It’s almost as if he had Contessa’s power but only in regards to parahumans. Robert on October 8, 2013 at 00:22 said: Chance of Thursday being an Interlude? No chapter scheduled for Thurs, since I’m traveling on Wednesday. flame7926 on October 8, 2013 at 00:31 said: Chances of Saturday being an interlude? DasNiveau on October 8, 2013 at 01:19 said: I would count on that. Better question: “Chances of next Tuesday being a bonus interlude?” Tom_D on October 8, 2013 at 18:36 said: Some one beat that man!! He’s trying to deny us plot! What pray tell, has gone so horribly wrong?? Keno Black on October 9, 2013 at 19:54 said: He listened to the Smurf sing. Damn it Wildbow! That cliffhanger, really? (On a seriously unrelated note, I’m still pissed that you killed Battery) Althalus on October 8, 2013 at 00:22 said: Hopefully it all goes wrong for Scion too. Cephalo the Pod on October 8, 2013 at 08:48 said: “Wrong for Scion that is.” Then one half of 30.1 is just an ASCII troll-face. ravinoff on October 8, 2013 at 00:26 said: I started reading this two weeks ago, and caught up about a week ago. My immediate verbal response to the end of this chapter: “oh fuck me!” followed by a sigh. lays out a table, sets down a candle, lights it with a flamethrower, opens up a box of wine for two places. Then he wheels in ravinoff, who is duct taped to a wheelchair, and sits down opposite Yes, it’s very different reading a story with cliffhangers when the resolution of the situation is further away than the next page. Still, you can take solace in the immortal last words of King Leonidas of Sparta, who said, “Fuck! This hurts like hell! Oh god, please don’t kill me. Ooooh, I just shit myself. It’s all down my leg. Come on guys, get me a bandaid, we can work something out.” What a way with words those Spartans had. Don’t fret, my dear. Most people here are not like me. They would prefer to quote Socrates “I drank what?” or Plato “That’s it! I just invented moldable clay that doesn’t dry!” or Aristotle, “I don’t know why I teach these kids. That Alexander will never make anything of himself,” in the middle of the many discussions we have. You’re welcome to join in on those, or on the punning, or even drawing something or writing fanfiction. Hell, if you want to mix and match Worm with Farscape in an epic sci-fi thriller, be my guest. Just don’t frelling be a problem and we shouldn’t have a problem. Don’t worry, most people here aren’t problems. The good thing I’ve found about problems, though, is that beer can sometimes be the solution. And so, ravinoff, welcome to the comments section. rips off the duct tape covering your mouth octopussy on October 8, 2013 at 09:45 said: I am SO jealous I never got one of these I expect you’ll give me eight different middle fingers, all in adult positions. But really, what else should I expect from a Bond character? Aside maybe a love scene after slapping them around and speaking with a heavy accent. “Oh Moneypenny, I love you but I’m too busy ignoring the Captain’s requests for more power to the forward shields. I’m givin’ her all I’ve got, captain! At this rate, we’ll never survive to Star Trek VII: The Search for Red October.” As for me, near as I can tell I just stuck to my rule that I don’t welcome someone unless it’s explicit that it’s their first time posting upon being caught up. For some reason, Octopussy, you just weren’t explicit. I can’t tell why. Octopi are normally very explicit if the Japanese are to be believed. Maybe you stayed up too late watching the Chronicles of Squiddick? How vulgaris But you’re here now, no longer hiding in the inky dark blackness of lurkerdom. Instead, you wish to run blue rings around us. Is that, it? You think we’re just a bunch of suckers? Does your cloaca? Well, it’s hurting me! Hopefully you don’t have thin skin, like some sort of glass octopus. Here, will some octo-pie cheer you up? Well how about if I say, Octopussy, welcome to the comments. I don’t recall getting one either. Likewise, you just started showing up all of a sudden with your comments caught in the spam filter along with all the spam bacon eggs spam spam and toast. As a result, you weren’t welcomed. You were left alone and unwelcomed by the side of the road, holding out a bag of spam for those driving by to buy from you. Also, you had a strange fascination with Scion telling Eidolon to annoy the readers. The correct answer, as we know by now, was “I love your hair.” So I’ve been wrestling (and not octopus wrestling either. That part’s over with) with what to welcome you with, as each welcome is handpicked from a field of wildwelcomes, chosen for ripeness, and then exported from Uraguay, all by cheap, backbreaking labor. It was the backbreaker that gave me the idea though. puts on a bandana and red and yellow boas So let me tell you somethin’, brother, you’re gonna get welcomed so hard that all the little Hulkamaniacs are going to stop saying their prayers, they’re going to stop taking their vitamins, they’re going to stop waving the American flag while changing in Madison Square Garden. puts on a pair of sunglasses and a Brahma Bull belt buckle What are they going to do instead? It doesn’t matter what they’re going to do! Let me tell you something, the Gex is gonna take that American flag, the Gex is gonna shine that sumbitch up real nice, turn it sideways, and shove it straight up your candyass! If ya smelllllll…what the Gex is cookin’? raises eyebrow, then puts on facepaint in the vague shape of a bird and ties up his biceps to look bigger, all while doing some over-the-top growling Iiiiii, Geeaaatwyyyrm…have a question…to answer your question. As you, Hoak Wyrm, travel to WRESTLEMANIA!!!! by conventional means…kick the cockpit door down, take the two pilots that have already made the sacrifice so that you can face this challenge, dispose of them, Hoak Wyrm. puts on a cowboy hat, oversized sunglasses, big beard, and changes the bandana’s color See I’ve been to the mountaintop! I’m a chameleon! I’m talkin’ the beat goes on and the beat goes on, and the beat goes on, Gecko Man is on a roll. Unbelievable, time distortion, space is the place Mean GoldWyrmerland. Now that I’m all wrestling promoed up, let’s cut to one of my own here. You think I’m strange? Try staying up late, drinking, with mud on my feet to give you all a welcome. I shot a man in the balls, I’ll do it again! Oh yeah, I’ll do it. That’s why I had my Moai putting together a rocket launcher. I spend days slaving over a hot, burning person that I lit on fire for you, and nobody even wants to eat the ham sandwiches I cook. So I say to you, greatwyrmgold, you’ve been to the promised land, you’ve seen what Orion looks like when he takes his belt off, you have had your dreams come true this morning. I say to you welcome, greatwyrmgold, to the comments! Snap into a Slim Jim! That was…interesting. ShawnMorgan on October 9, 2013 at 19:08 said: All you had to do was ask and PG would give you one. Makes me wish I can remember what chapter was the first one I posted in so i could go back and re-read mine. No, that is not a request for one Psycho Gecko. Once is enough. https://parahumans.wordpress.com/2013/05/25/drone-23-1/#comment-24575 Well that’s certainly going above and beyond. Gabriel on October 8, 2013 at 09:09 said: I started reading a week ago, and caught up yesterday morning. I’m actually glad I didn’t get here until the end; living with this kind of anticipation/anxiety continuously over multiple years would ruin my adrenal glands for life. Yeah, if you had to sit and wait like this, update after update, cliffhanger after cliffhanger, for such a long time, you’d likely go mad. Mad I say! Luckily, I could not be maddened by this long journey. I am immune to being made mad anymore, and I’ve been working on sharing said immunity with others. Don’t worry, this will only hurt…latex glove snap…for an eternity. Yeah, I’ve been here a good while. You might say I’m something of a thing. Kinda a big deal. Deadpool? Oh, he’s nice, I suppose. Nice at sucking. No, really, he’s got this act with a golfball and a garden hose. It all ends with a floral arrangement of azaleas and green and pink gourmet cupcakes. I told you it was nice. But now you’re here and much like Janet Weiss, you get to live with the antici………………pation. Also, sweet transvestites. But hey, you don’t have to. You could go back to lurking. I’m sure that’s fine. No need to hear about who people think is fucking who, the phrasing of which suggests Imp is masturbating again. For now, Gabriel, welcome to the comments section. Ahem about that preserved sanity of mine PG. thanks for lucking after it. Please may I have it back now? endochrom on October 8, 2013 at 00:27 said: I wonder which walls are gonna be knocked down by this. Increased range? Ability to control more than bugs? Or is it just going to end in sensory overload and a shuddering pile of goop? Her humanity Either way it is going to suck for Taylor even if she would consider it a ‘success’. Clean on October 8, 2013 at 09:02 said: My current thoughts is that her ability with insects will be reduced or removed, taken over by a power aimed at manipulating PEOPLE; either directly (as with her bugs), making her some sort of multi-body sentience (similar with the C.U.I capes), or socially as with jack, which lets her gather humanity to fight together. Probably wrong, but that’s my guess. Scolopendra on October 8, 2013 at 12:53 said: I am a bit more concerned about what we know the limiters on the shards do, rather than any new powers Taylor will get. I recall from the Scion interlude that passengers are given a limiting agent in order to prevent destructive physical mutation. It’s kind of stated as well during this arc that the “Balance” formula from Cauldron was essentially this limiter in a distilled form. When Cauldron didn’t use that formula, the result was the Case 53s, or at least that’s how I understand what was said. Dinah told Taylor a long time ago that she would be present at the end of days, but she would be “different”. I think she was being deliberately vague there. I’ve got a feeling Taylor will probably get some boost to her powers when they remove the limits, probably the ability to bypass the Manton Effect or some such, but it’s probably going to come at the cost of her mutating into something inhuman. Landis963 on October 8, 2013 at 17:10 said: That “different” clause has gone through so many interpretive iterations it’s not even funny. Remember when we thought “different” meant “she’s joined the Protectorate”? Yeah. I had thought that was met with her new lower body. Of course, it couldn’t be that easy. “But I got freaking CUT IN HALF!!!” “Nope. Sorry. Not what I was talking about. THIS is gonna suck.” massivereader on October 12, 2013 at 12:58 said: Au contraire, if the surgery is removing the filter her partner installed for her protection from her own power, the logical result is her consiousness becoming difuse, much like an A. I., dispersed among all the insects withing range of her power (or that of her partner, or maybe _all_ partners) like an A. I. dispersed across the processing nodes of a network, or even the entire internet. Parts of this have been foreshadowed. The problem is: what will be the effect on Skitter’s psychology when she _becomes_ a cloud of bugs rather than just controling them remotely? On second thought, if she becomes all the insectoid biomass within her range will she no longer need relay bugs? Will there be any limit to her range then? Given Scion is still flesh, and the order of magnitude of bug biomass available on any planet, maybe she can just eat her way to the bottom of the well of him. She IS the other Entitis Comunication-shard after that. That or a pile of goop. Or a mutating Bugzilla. fghjconner on October 8, 2013 at 05:09 said: Wasn’t it Administration shard? Yes, it was administration. Jack was the broadcaster. Fixing the administration shard might give her control (or influence, or coordination/communication capability) of all capes, or the shards themselves. Aname on October 8, 2013 at 10:05 said: I thought of Administration shard as intern communication between shards. Alan on October 8, 2013 at 03:31 said: She’ll probably be able to control any living creature and proceeds to kick Scion’s butt by carefully coordinating all the capes on all worlds. nick012000 on October 8, 2013 at 05:57 said: Or she’ll regain the power to control all the shards, like her shard was originally designed to do. Then she mind-controls both the Endbringers and Scion. Both of those would be absurdly OP and would be a cheap way to resolve the story, so as much as that would be good for the world I hope that isn’t how wildbow resolves this. JN on October 8, 2013 at 00:28 said: Mr. Worf, fire. Mr. Worf’s out sick today. Bad touch of the Flu. There’s been a veritable Barrage of that going around. Oh fuck oh fuck. Passenger in control at the end, or at least has much more control. Administrator probably controls the rest of the shards, so what exactly does that do in this context? I’m think Taylor has a pretty good chance of dying or having some life ending or near life ending experience so she is incapacitated. The saddest thing for me is how she ended with Grue. Break-up sex, then next time she sees him he has a girlfriend, and they never really talk. Then he goes off to live in the woods. Incredibly sad. That wussy is long forgotten. End of the World? No, I’d rather bang my girl in a hut on a isolated world. Great plan. Damn. Now I’d like to bang his girl in a hut on an isolated world. Sounds like a good time. I expect part of the reason for his leaving is the difficulty of writing around a power stealer. Any time he goes up against someone with a really good power, he can just turn it on them. Of course the moment he goes against two people at once that advantage is negated. Remember: Grue can only copy one power at the time. I think it has more to do with Grue’s character arc sort of having nowhere else to go after the Bonesaw debacle than wildbow having trouble with a potenially story-breaking power. (He has after all used WAY more broken abilities successfully). TanaNari on October 8, 2013 at 13:26 said: I think it’s a very reasonable end. His whole reason for doing “cape” was to help his sister. He got that, in a way. He was never good at facing his issues. Bonesaw tore him apart physically and mentally. He never recovered. And he was reminded of his uselessness against Scion repeatedly. It fit. Too bad Scion probably dropped by and incinerated him when burning through umpteen million other realities. Nah. Grue’s ability to copy (not steal) powers has always had some decent limiters built in – the major one being that he doesn’t get any associated secondary skills. It’s a fairly powerful ability best used on opponents with straightforward powers and at a significant disadvantage vs more nuanced powers like Taylor’s, Eidolon’s or Panacea’s and probably even Bitch’s (he’d just end up with monster dogs that aren’t trained to obey him). Even if he’s up against an opponent he can duplicate perfectly, that at best makes him equal to – not better than – one of their opponents. (And I have a feeling his ability actually makes him slightly less powerful than the person copied). In short : useful guy to have on your side, but hardly a gamebreaker… Deraldin on October 8, 2013 at 00:30 said: As much as I hate it when you end all these chapters with little (or big) cliffhangers, I can at least console myself with the knowledge that I only have to wait half a week until they are resolved (and replaced with a new one). Unless we hit another interlude… This neatly explains whey Dinah still hasn’t approached Taylor. I find it very curious how she said the time she is the most like herself was when she is fighting for her life. I think her passenger effected her more than she realizes. But now its FUN TIME. What does an unbound Taylor look like? Guesses: 1. Controls EVERY non sentient/simple animal. Nightmarish and world ending for sure, but no real threat to Zion. 2. Ability similar to Jack. The ability to communicate/interact with passengers directly. Unparalleled communication, coordination, and leadership for everyone. Might be able to communicate with Zion and pull a tattletale mindbreaking speech. 3. Queen administrator. May actually be able to manipulate passengers directly. In contrast to the fairy queen that might be 2nd triggers for everyone, confusing Zion directly, and manipulating powers on a grand scale. Some powers out there unbound might be enough to kill Zion. Nourjan on October 8, 2013 at 01:30 said: Taylor is not going to get new powers They’re not messing with her shard(they couldn’t,Scion made that impossible) there are only messing with her head,ergo giving her current power a major boost at great price. No happy ending on October 8, 2013 at 08:18 said: Number 3. She gains the power to control the other powers/shards (either directly or by giving orders, propably the latter), which she uses to pull together the other entity’s shards thus recreating it and giving Zion a mate. Which obviously isn’t a good thing, since their ritual includes using up all the possible earths for energy to reach the next victims. Seems MrMoran had the same idea earlier: https://parahumans.wordpress.com/2013/10/08/venom-29-9/#comment-45245 Serves me right for commenting before reading all the other comments. The Sandman on October 8, 2013 at 00:33 said: Probably for the best they don’t try to fix Scion up with a new partner. You know, what with the whole “they blow up every iteration of the planet they’re on throughout the multiverse at the end of each breeding cycle” thing. As far as things going wrong… well, given that Taylor has the admin shard, any attempt to undo Scion’s gimping of it is likely to give her power over other shards, and thus capes. This is an effect that would probably expand outwards from her body as she starts to use it, with the closest capes being the first ones affected by it. Right now, the cape closest to her is Panacea, who’s in the middle of doing metaphysical surgery on her soul. The recursion involved could get ugly. Chrispikula on October 8, 2013 at 01:03 said: True, but I don’t think they know that. Scratch on October 8, 2013 at 00:33 said: Y’know, wildbow, you’re an excellent writer. When Worm hits print, i’ll absolutely buy a copy. IF ONLY SO I DON’T HAVE TO DEAL WITH THESE GODDAMN CLIFFHANGERS AAAAAAARRRRRGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH I HAVE TO WAIT UNTIL FRACKING SATURDAY!?!?! SAAAAATURDAAYYYY!!!!! YOU BETTER HOPE WE NEVER MEET IN A CROWDED BAR, WILDBOW, BECAUSE I WILL HOWL “THIS IS FOR VENOM 29.9” AND THEN WE THROW DOWN No wonder Wildbow is traveling. If he wasn’t, the hitmen all the Lurkers sent to rough him up would catch up to him. a on October 8, 2013 at 01:23 said: I love the cliffhangers 🙂 The Worm ones are of a minority, mixed with just enough closure and action for them to work. It is easy, when you know that the solution will come in less than a week as part of another excellent chapter with enough closure and action for it to stand on its own. Its something unique for Worm on the web serial scene. Most other web fiction is a) published ones or twice every blue moon.. or b) published regularly – one small bite ( 700 words ) at a time.. Compared to them, Worm is in its own category 🙂 I definitely will kill some trees for Worm on a hardcover. Something that I won’t do for most other published works.. Agreed. On all points, agreed. I’d like you to buy him as much beer as he want in that bar. Or you will deal with me knuckle crack muhahahahahaha *And it all went wrong.* Of course it did. Lets be honest. How many times have things actually gone right in this story? The one time it happened, Taylor started checking for the seams in the virtual reality she had to be trapped in because it was so damn unbelievable 😀 And then she got outed. packbat on October 8, 2013 at 02:02 said: That was a great chapter. It’s my favorite so far. I’ll have to wait for the end, but I expect it to stay in the top 3. Dues on October 8, 2013 at 01:04 said: Taylor got laid once. Problem is, whenever something goes right in this story, something else has to go horribly wrong. So, that’s when we officially confirmed that the apocalypse was coming… Veloren on October 9, 2013 at 03:29 said: cheerfully dances around, throwing confetti DOOOOMED! We’re all DOOOOMED! 😀 MrMoray on October 8, 2013 at 00:34 said: With the governor removed, Taylor becomes Zion’s new partner. Crisis averted. Until every iteration of Earth is blown up because they need the energy to move on to other planets… Hey it will take 300 years for it to happen. Procrastination is second nature for humanity. Indeed, why do today what you can do tomorrow? And if you delay it long enough you will be dead before it matters. Doubt it. Best cape to be the new partner is undeniably Glaistig, due to her sheer number of powers. Maybe she could, I dunno, kill Taylor or Aiden to get a crippled Administrator shard or something like that, but other than that she is as ready as she could be. Aranfan on October 8, 2013 at 00:50 said: I actually find “And it all went wrong” less disturbing than some sort of “And the world was right again” thing. Might just be me. Yeah, somehow I hear “And the world was right again” in a voice that’s way more alien than Taylor speaking through a swarm of insects without pausing for breath. gantradiesdracos on October 10, 2013 at 00:02 said: like this one form the new XCOM? “HE’S IN MY HEAD! HE’S IN MY- nothing. its nothing ,its fine. everything is..fine.” No One In Particular on October 8, 2013 at 00:51 said: Damn damn damn damn damn damn damn damn damn damn damn damn damn That’s pretty much exactly what’s been running through my head in the second half of the chapter. Can’t decide if I’m happy to stay up to read, or upset because it’s even to longer to wait. For there WILL be a countdown. I mean…just…damn… – Sveta made it. Cool. Hopefully Weld did too. – Golem. Straight-up hero. Well on his way to Weld-level goodness. – Earth H makes me think of hentai for some reason. Mmm, Earth Hentai. Cat-girls and tentacle monsters as far as the eye can see … – aaaand an in-universe explanation of Taylor’s pain threshold. w00t. Haters can suck it! – Marquis makes tea for everyone. Cool-ass motherfucker. – Bonesaw and Panacea are on first-name basis now. Touching. – I think I know what’s going to happen. Weaver Taylor Skitter Spy is gambling that when her head gets opened up and the full power of her shard comes flooding through, the very fact that the shard is the administrator shard will let her turn it around and regain control like a person lifting erself into the air by er bootstraps. After that, who knows? Maybe she accesses the other shards and starts unlocking them with admin access (what does Shadow Stalker’s shard unlock to, I wonder? What does Canary’s?) Maybe she straight-up talks to Scion, the real Scion. Whichever way, we’re approaching the endgame. I’m still rooting for an arc named Ommatidium. Matt Nordhoff on October 8, 2013 at 01:09 said: ” – Earth H makes me think of hentai for some reason. Mmm, Earth Hentai. Cat-girls and tentacle monsters as far as the eye can see …” Paging Dr. Nilbog. Elias N Vasylenko on October 8, 2013 at 04:41 said: Made me LOL Ironically, H is the actual name for the type of stuff you’re thinking of, in Japanese. Hentai (in Japanese usage) is MUCH more hardcore, and is not the sort of stuff a typical person would admit to reading. If you’re just reading about furries and lewd monsters, the name for that in Japan is just H. (It still comes from Hentai, I’m pretty sure, but it’s, like, polite Hentai. :p) Graham Percival on October 9, 2013 at 01:04 said: So by implication, the typical person would admit to reading stuff with cat-girls and tentacles? :o_O Yeah. I think because they’re more restrictive about pornography, they just put it in every damn thing, or something. Can’t even show penises, I thought I heard. Hence why women get assaulted by a bunch of penis-like tentacles. To clarify, since they can’t make and/or market something classified as pornography, they get around it by putting erotic stuff in other stories that aren’t classified as pornography. Like the softcore stuff they show late at night on Skinemax, HBhO, The adult Movie Channel, and Porn Starz, they have to actually have a plot attached. Anon on November 7, 2013 at 00:22 said: FWIW, the H comes from ‘ecchi’, which means ‘perverted’ and sounds similar to the letter H in Japanese. Am I the only one thinking about Something like “Marquis facts” : “It always gets worse in Worm. Except when Marquis makes tea”. …And then it waits till lunchtime. Golem is certainly one of the Wormverse’s paladins. I think he’s probably surpassed Weld, though — he’s more perceptive on an interpersonal level, and with the training from hell he went through with Weaver, I’d bet on him over Weld in a fight any day of the week. And Marquis is two hundred pounds of pure awesome in a ten pound bag. One hundred percent class. Agreed. If he survives I can see him become the new Chevalier. I think Golem as a leader would actually be more like Legend than Chevalier — Miss Militia I think is the closest analogue. I like Legend and I feel sorry for him, but lets face it: he fucked up because he didn’t want to believe that his friends weren’t really nice guys. And Miss Militia can sometimes come dangerously close to ” My Country Right Or Wrong/I Am Following Orders”. She’s still one of the more reasonable heroes out there, as evidenced by Taylor practically forcing her to handle the BBPRT after Tagg. She’s better than Dragon in that regard (admittedly Dragon’s handicapped there), but it would make for an interesting character arc/interlude where she evolved from lawful to neutral good or somesuch. Bonus points if she hooks up with Chevalier, because that needs to happen. Personally I’m hoping for Ingenue’s Heel Face Turn and subsequent hook-up, even though she has “redeems herself and then dying in Chevalier’s arms” written in giant letters over her head. Seriously the guys shipping Chev/MM are basing it on a childhood crush that din’t survive high school/college (can’t remeber which is one it was). 🙂 . AMR, your comment doesn’t have a “reply” button, so this makes a response awkward. First, their relationship didn’t survive high school, as while MM went to college (not sure about Chevy), they were probably too busy being big damn heroes. Second, sure it was a childhood crush, but it was an interesting childhood crush. Chevalier and MM were pretty much the only people they could really relate to (at least that was my impression), because as kids, they were put into a situation where the only things they could rely on to obtain justice were themselves and their powers. They were basically children forced to become adults because of responsibility and circumstance. Then the Wards happen and Hero comes along, telling them that they’re not alone and granting them another chance at being kids before they get swept up into the Protectorate. Then they both graduate to the Protectorate and get their own teams, and end up as genuinely good people stuck in systems that hinder their abilities to be genuinely good and their situations start to get worse by the day (MM leading the BBPRT, and Chevy leading the whole freakin’ Protectorate). The point I’m rambling towards is that the Chevalier/Miss Militia relationship is an artifact of a better time; it’s an event from a time where there was much less stress and responsibility riding on their shoulders. I’m not saying that Wildbow should abort his plans and have the next interlude be Chevy and MM making out in the middle of a Scion attack, but the two getting back together as a potential Epilogue chapter after Scion is defeated would be a great way to wrap up part of the story, due to the pathos the underlying themes evoke. @overpoweredengineer: My comment was mostly tongue in cheek. I understand why people would ship two very decent persons ( a rare breed in Worm) that even had a history between them. I guess it’s just the strong Batman/Catwoman vibes that Chevalier/Ingenue give me, though Ingenue is admittedly way more fucked up than Catwoman. And yes I recognise the potential sexism about the femme fatale who needs a good man to set her straight. And Miss Militia can sometimes come dangerously close to ” My Country Right Or Wrong/I Am Following Orders”. I honestly haven’t seen that. She tends to play by the rules, yes, but she’s perfectly willing to be flexible about it — remember how she coached Armsmaster on gaming the system re: losing a Ward in her interlude? She doesn’t go off the reservation without a good reason, but if she’s got a good reason, she’ll go for the best option she can come up with. She got dangerously close to “just following orders” during Skitter’s interrogation (leaving her to Alexandria’s dubious mercies), which Taylor called her on. The interrogation is especially interesting. When Taylor “calls her on it”, Miss Militia’s excuse is — paraphrasing — “You had a plan, Alexandria said she had a plan. If I did anything, I knew I’d step on someone’s toes.”. She was just following orders, but her (claimed) reasoning for it is the opposite of blind obedience. Reveen on October 9, 2013 at 17:03 said: I think she does have a history of not setting boundaries and advising against certain actions when dealing with the PRT directors. When you have Piggot and Tagg acting like coked up cowboys she might not have to do anything, but she should say something. You could point out that the PRT can just ride over the wishes of the heroes whenever they want. But at the end of the day it’s the PRT that needs the capes more than the capes need them. They could easily get leverage to effect policy. But it’s not just MM’s fault. Even Legend tended to just shrug his shoulders and let Piggot do whatever. Piggot outranks Legend. He doesn’t get a say, beyond his general influence as a major figure. I think the point is that everyone has the capacity to stand up for what they believe is right, regardless of hierarchy. Which isn’t to say there wouldn’t be consequences. But when you’re one of the most powerful superhumans on the planet “I did absolutely nothing about highly questionable things ‘cos chain of command” is a particularly weak excuse. hitherbydragons on October 8, 2013 at 00:52 said: > Alone, the shields were too weak. Together, the shields were still too weak. Nice. ^_^ Seconded. Yeah, it’s a great line. Incidentally, I suspect that that was the Yangban’s network in action. Taylor mentioned that several powers had spread among a large number of capes, and the Yangban network is the only power we’ve seen so far that could do that. Eloquence is such an excellent trait in literature. So is wit. That quote contains both. And yeah, the Prototype Sample Platter is probably the ones behind that. SEA-106 on October 8, 2013 at 00:54 said: There are several possibilities that I can see. This is by no means a comprehensive list, and they aren’t all mutually exclusive. Taylor goes all Doormaker. She gets insane power, but at the cost of her mind. She need to be led by somebody else, probably Tattletale I find this unlikely. Mainly because she’s the main character, and we know there’s at least one more arc. Without her brain, she couldn’t talk much. It also doesn’t seem right, narrative-wise, but I can’t quite find the words to explain why. Taylor’s changes make her act evil. She becomes a second antagonist. Extremely unlikely. Scion is already enough to deal with, and adding to the pile makes things more difficult to resolve without deus ex machina. Unless 3., see below, is also true. Taylor gets an increased power over shards, which turns her into the equivalent of an entity. She ‘marries’ Scion and they live happily ever after. Somehow, they leave Earth without destroying every version. She might be evil, as stated above, but it is irrelevant, because she and Scion will leave, probably. Taylor is improved, with only limited or temporary destruction of self. She is sane enough, and powerful enough, to lead the fight against Scion, and win. I think this is what we’re all hoping for, but the last sentence makes it seem like it’s going to be more complicated than this. 5. (weird idea that is almost certainly false) Hive mind theory is true. Panacea accidentally splits Taylor from her body. She keeps her personality and her power, but is stuck in the swarm. Her body goes insane and possibly homicidal. 3. is my favourite option just for shock value. also, saving the world by sacrificing her life/friends? it mirrors (on a larger scale) her hero transition, I think. what lovely foreshadowing that would be. Unmaker on October 8, 2013 at 12:29 said: I had some of the same options in mind, but repeatedly getting hit over the head with the “Wildbow came up with something that fits the evidence that I never thought of” hammer has slightly dulled my enthusiasm for guessing. For this, possibly THE major event in the story, I am betting on “none of the above”, with a the usual admixture of “more f*ed up than the readers thought”. Right in +1 “more fed up than the readers thought”. That’s like Wildbow’s version of Cauldron’s Balance formula. Except he uses it to make the situation worse, rather than better. demoscat on October 8, 2013 at 21:45 said: My thought is, if Taylor does become a master shard administrator, it will be like having root access in UNIX. Passwords? File permissions? We don’t need no stinking passwords and permissions! I can’t remember: Is the 3rd entity still hanging around, or at least potentially in range? As I recall, the 3rd entity evolved a way to complete its breeding cycle without destroying the host – the multi-Earths in our case. The idea that floated in my brain is, what if unrestricted Taylor can control and organize all shards within a certain range? In particular, how about individuals already used to working in a group – the Yang Bang. We already saw a magnifying effect from the Yang Bang working together. What if Taylor can merge capes into a gestalt; an effect creating a whole greater than the sum of its parts? Having achieved that, she would still be less than Scion, but she might be capable of reaching out to the 3rd entity. How about a gestalt formed from the 3rd entity, the Endbringers, the case 53’s, and what’s left of Taylor in control? That might be enough, if not to challenge Scion directly, then to at least offer Scion an alternative – a new partner with the “DNA” to evolve into something new. A non-destructive life cycle and elements of what we call humanity – compassion and empathy for other living things. Stephen M (Ethesis) on October 8, 2013 at 23:46 said: Five sounds like a good “all goes wrong” sort of thing. Stop on October 8, 2013 at 00:59 said: No one thinks she loses her power or gets disconnected from it? Ooo, I like that idea! and as we’ve seen from Doctor Mother, you don’t need powers to be extremely scary. Plus Numbers Man seems to be already following her orders. Also, if she loses her current powers, could she then drink the formula to get a new one? Totally random spec: she ends up going back in time and takes the name “Doctor Mother”. They both have that “yeah, I’m doing horrible things, but it’s for the best” mentality. It ties nicely with the tagline of “Worm: doing the wrong thing for the right reasons”. Dr Mother is black. And the formulas have all been destroyed. > Dr Mother is black. Panacea can fix that. > And the formulas have all been destroyed. …but not that. Darn. But Dr Mother could fix up some formulas by taking shards but we already heard Dr Mother’s name. Epoch (time travels don’t die) and Sleeper have yet to appear; I think they might be good guys or good guys to have around. Other tin hat theories: -Dr.Mother is Grue’s or Imp’s child(or sister) from a different time and grew up knowing Taylor as we know she lives(in some way). -There were other groups that have been pulling strings from the shadows. -Endbringers are those that failed to beat Scion and they were trying to get mankind ready. Smurf made Noelle, which brought about the escape portals. They all made life more stressful so more capes pop up. -Taylor becomes an Endbringer. -Scion has to thing about having a power to use it. He shows up on camera now! -Endbringers were the powers Eidolon threw away. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH! breathe* AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHi’mokay. Man, this is a really deep hole…wanna play 20 questions? Not with you, I don’t… youtube.com/watch?v=blclmxZHCF0 Fuuuuck. I wonder if wildbow can get medically certified as a cliffhanger addict. Anyway, the Simurgh starts screaming at the same moment that Taylor decides to let Panacea mess with her brains in the hope for a powerup. Coincidence? I think not! Now Scion crippled Taylor’s shard so much that it was basically destroyed. However what this arc drove home is that Scion, being extremely unimaginative, never took in account what combined powers could do. So there’s hope. Though those last words there really want me to think the contrary. Seems Riley finally got her wish for a big sister. Does that make Marquis her new father? Nice to see Tattletale already needling Number Man. Though, to be honest, NM did subtly insult her in her absence ( the old facts vs guesswork thing). Seriously, what is it about thinkers and massive rivalries? veekie on October 8, 2013 at 06:20 said: Makes me think about the one ‘sorry’ that Simurgh delivered back then. The egg planted has hatched. Wilbow’s more like a cliffhanger dealer. Or maybe now that I think about it, a cliffhanger connoiseur. “Seriously, what is it about thinkers and massive rivalries?” What’s that old saying–“Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely”? A variation on that is “Intelligence makes one proud, and superpowered intelligence makes one massively hubristic.” Number Man, Tattletale, Accord, even Contessa; all want to be the smartest guy in the room. When two or, Scion forbid, three of these people are in the same room, they feel a need to prove that their smarts, their particular brand of intelligence and Thinking is the smartest, the most powerful. By chance do you remember what else Bonesaw wanted to work with Panacea, went they first met, the S9 recruitment? on interlude-11h: Panacea: “Then why don’t you change? You could be good.” Bonesaw: “I like the other members of the Nine. And I couldn’t make anything really amazing if I was following rules. I want to make something even more amazing than Hack Job, Murder Rat or Pagoda. Something you and I could only make together. Can you imagine it? You could use your power, and then we could make one superperson out of a hundred capes, and all of the powers would be full strength because you helped and we could use it to stop one of the Endbringers, and the whole world would be like, ‘Are we supposed to clap’? Can you picture it?” Bonesaw was getting so excited with her idea that she was almost breathless. Wildbow: “I like them idea, granted” I liked the part about a cape throwing Leviathan at Scion. The Fastball Special just became the Beach Ball Special. Damn, I’m surprised nobody figured out the connection between Simurgh’s apology and Dinah’s note. Also, I got the distinct feeling Imp was mocking the bug consciousness theory some people have had. Leaning on the fourth wall is one way to utilize the comic relief. But since we’re dealing with the brain here, let’s drop some brain music! Mrmdubois on October 8, 2013 at 05:07 said: Good call on the connection between Dinah and the Simurgh’s apology. I never realized that the connection was supposed to be that subtle. I didn’t get it until he said it – thanks PG. Stephen R. Marsh on October 8, 2013 at 23:12 said: “Damn, I’m surprised nobody figured out the connection between Simurgh’s apology and Dinah’s note. Also, I got the distinct feeling Imp was mocking the bug consciousness theory some people have had. Leaning on the fourth wall is one way to utilize the comic relief. ” I was impressed as well. So many people pick up on subtle stuff like that, it’s hard to believe everyone missed it. illlogicmedia on October 9, 2013 at 15:09 said: Wow…total brainflop. “How could I have been so blind?” Nice job PG. Ever been so angry… That you threw an Enbringer? JN on October 11, 2013 at 13:48 said: Hulk … SPLASH? …partway through reading, imp at the platform>.< Throwing Leviathan! "Nobody tosses an Endbringer!" I liked Skitter's comment on Bonesaw trying to be a goodguy. And how nobody commented at all on Taylor's outward identity slipping back towards Skitter. The insight into Taylor's pain tolerance- and how she looks at it- was interesting. "Mantellum slipped by us because he had a power that countered perception powers. The sort of power we’d need against Scion would be an offensive one" This strikes me as hilarious. If Mentellum could work against Scion's prescience, then I could just imagine what could have been done with him. I have been perennially surprised that nobody seems to ask Panacea for some gills and some wings and a few extra thumbs. Or perhaps simply some redundant organs… And here we go! Gwen on October 8, 2013 at 04:10 said: “And how nobody commented at all on Taylor’s outward identity slipping back towards Skitter.” Imp did. I was barely awake at the time, and meant to write more about Imp- you can see the stub at the top of my comment where I forgot to remove it. I really did briefly think she’d died there on the platform, when she made that sound and suddenly Taylor commented on the status of everyone but her. Two problems. 1. Panacea is limited, surprisingly enough. Bonesaw can screw up vital processes in an operation because she can bring the person back to life afterwards. She can bring whole new organs to the mix, because she doesn’t have to stick to existing biomass. She doesn’t have to worry about if things will connect right, because her Tinker powers evidently explain that for her. Panacea can’t do anything for a corpse, so she needs to make sure that every intermediate step is 100% viable. She is also limited by the “stuff” available, and to a lesser extent the space. Finally, Panacea does NOT have an instinctive understanding of how to make everything work. And organs are complicated. If you don’t hook it to the nervous system properly, it won’t do anything. If you don’t hook it to the circulatory system properly, it will die. If you don’t account for how it interacts with other stuff in its area it might get squashed or squash something else. 2. Panacea is limiting herself. She saw what she could do back when the S9 were in town, and afterwards…she doesn’t want to go there again. Huh, I’m almost certain that Panacea DOES HAVE intuitive knowledge. Grue, when using her power to give Atlas a digestive track was complaining that he got the bio-manipulation but not the immediate understanding that goes with it. And Panacea has done lots of progress since her Birdcaging, thanks to Marquis. Panacea has the ability to see what she is doing, at least, but she doesn’t have foresight. She can make an extra arm or whatever, but unless she’s replacing a lost one it will probably not fit well with the rest of the body, long-term. skywiseskychan on October 8, 2013 at 11:40 said: Panacea isn’t limited in the way described. She instinctively does know how things work, how to make each change, how to intentionally set up a system to fail or not. With the original relay bugs and the later versions and Atlas. No, her limitation is more basic than that. Her changes are permanant. The very nature of her subject gets changed to the point where if she has to revert to an earlier step she has to actually change it back. Riley could just look at unchanged DNA to map the original again, but with Panacea the DNA is already changed as a part of the process. Her limit is her memory and imagination. People are clay to her and if she’s not simply filling in pieces that were torn away she changes the result permenantly. It’s like starting with Pink play dough and adding Green. Trying to get back to the original shade of pink is almost impossible because they have become blended where with Riley they would remain separate. So, we have a couple options here. 1. Either Taylor must fail here because Scion would never bring himself to a situation in which he could be so totally pwned due to his whole “finding victory” power. 2. Scion’s so pissed off that he’s ignoring or not using his power to determine the victorious path and will be pwned. Also, I’m thinking one of the problems with removing the regulators is that the bugs will touch Taylor’s mind as well and she’ll have to deal with more fully connecting to their brains. May be moot, though, if she gets kind of a super Jack Slash power as far as administrating people. Hmm, or Scion went looking for a future in which the “hosts” failed to defeat him…and Taylor’s new state leaves her reading as “another worm” (or “part of himself”) and he missed the fact that in this reality she makes him bite the curb while she puts on her stomping boots. Anthrodogma on October 8, 2013 at 02:11 said: First time poster, long time lurker! When I first found Worm I wasn’t planning on reading it, I was simply looking for an example of a good web-serial template. I was scanning down the first chapter and noticed Taylor’s name (which I share) and decided to at least read the first chapter… then the next.. etc. Immediately hooked. Love this story; you’ve done an incredible job, Wildbow. I am thoroughly addicted. Also, me and my husband cosplay and I was thinking about doing a Skitter/Weaver costume. Would that be alright with you? That’d be great! Show me pictures if you get it done. If you need help with any details, ask in the comments or fire me an email (my email is at the bottom of the donate page). …and that was “The Final Countdown”. Listeners, if you’re just joining us, we’d like to thank for your being alive today and not raiding the station. We spent half of yesterday hosing down the barbed wire from the last group that tried to take our sponsor’s product, delicious Pepsi-Cola. Pepsi: It’s all we can get at this point. Alright, we have a first time caller here on W-ORM, your #1 station on all the planet for the top hits of the day, mostly because all the other stations were destroyed. Our new caller is Taylor, just like the supervillain-turned-superhero known as Weaver or Skitter. Lets give Taylor a hearty welcome, okay? Now apparently she’s an addict. I think we’ve all been there before, right folks? Those long nights of partying late into the middle of the night, snorting coke with your friends, and then transforming into a giant dragon monster to fight another giant monster in Japan. Good times, good times, lots of acid dropped too. Speaking of substances to give your reality a boost, it looks like Cauldron got busted by the Man. The only dealers of the Cauldron Formula, aka Power Juice, aka Red Bull, aka the Ole Powers and Diarrhea, aka Captain Happy, aka Hulkamania, aka Liquid Schwarz, have been hit and they’ve been hit hard. Looks like the only superheroes you ca get from drugs now are Bongman and his nemesis The Toker. Now we don’t have time to actually let our new listener break into the broadcast because the zombies just started attacking, but we’ll be happy to let them stick around if they can make it to shelter within the range of our antennas. Welcome, Anthrodogma, to the comments. Let’s give her a big hand, folks. Next up, we’ll be playing “Doomsday Blues” by Craig Erickson. Anthrodogma, this is our resident weirdo, Psycho Gecko. I see he’s introduced himself to you and probably caused acute WTF syndrome. Well, welcome to the comments. Yes, I’ve seen Mr. Gecko… probably one of the less weird things he’s posted. Thanks for the welcome. And I will definitely be sending you some questions about the costume, Wildbow. Greetings Anthrodogma, from this aging comic book geek here. You’v picked a fine story to read. Now about your costume questions, well there are talented fan art drawings that may help. Not everyone spots the fan art link at the top fist time around? And for some reason I am now halfway to imagining a furry adaptation of Worm. Go figure… Anthrodogma on October 11, 2013 at 14:43 said: Yes, I’ve been studying the fan art. I mostly want to double-check with Wildbow on the shapes of the pieces and texture since the armor is supposed to be made of bug exoskeletons. Hopefully it doesn’t go so awry as to look furry =) Most importanly, we all hope you have fun with it Alathon on October 8, 2013 at 02:46 said: I could hear the Simurgh’s screaming. That’s how you know you’re about to make a real winner of a decision. I can see it now: Next week, Epilogue chapters start up. Survivors discuss that bit of particular nastiness the Simurgh arranged for the girl who had the poor sense to go to her. Sorta like Cherie and Jack Slash, except Jack Slash has some human limitations. TheShadowbehindyou on October 8, 2013 at 04:30 said: They can’ reach Zion’s real body, can’t they? Because it would fix all their problems at once. Love’s that I shed a tear when I red the last paragraph, haven’t been invested in such a good story for a long time. You know the saying, “life writes the best stories?” Fuck that, wildbow is better 🙂 That endorsement should go on the book liner. “You know the saying, life writes the best stories? Fuck that, Wildbow is better.” I’ll probably never get mine in there… “Prepare to be skullfucked by awesome.” Maybe it can go in the eventual movie series? claps Someone on the giantitp forum pointed out that this is the sort of thing (not telling people about her plans) that got Cauldron into this big of a mess in the first place. And, incidentally, the thing that POed Taylor in the first place. Well, yes and no. The big difference is that Taylor made a personal choice and took a risk that basically affects herself (Mostly. If things go pear-shaped there is a chance she could become a menace to the others). Cauldron constantly made covert decisions that directly affected other people. dpara on October 8, 2013 at 06:35 said: Guys, no problem! The Simurgh is on top of this … “I’m sorry”. ..What could go wrong.. Oh shit. I’m genuinely afraid for Taylor, now. Oh, Taylor, what have you done? What she always does. No matter the cost. Valin K Syrcen on October 8, 2013 at 07:56 said: Wildbow, you’re as bad as Yukito Kishiro. I love your work but damn, end it already– the suspense is killing me (and giving James Cameron an excuse to procrastinate)! Is this your first time commenting while caught up to the story? Oh dear. SAY NO, VKS, SAY NO AND PROTECT YOUR SANITY! So the Simurgh has started singing shortly before Panacea starts to do brain/passenger modification surgery on Taylor. If I am not mistaken, in the Doctor Mother interlude, we saw Simurgh describe taking a stance which would be suggestive of a person crucified. On her toes, wings splayed back, head turned. Accompanied by the “sorry.” Taylor was definitely guided to this choice, even without Dinah. Since Simurgh is actually active in the area, I wonder… Are we looking at Taylor becoming a link between Endbringers? They seem to need to follow someone. Imagine all the Endbringers using all their powers with the smoothness and coordination of Taylor’s tactical sense. We still don’t have an answer as to what actually created Endbringers. It seems likely that Eidolon was in some way involved, even if not intentionally. But what if they were simple badly damaged shards, and Simurgh is able to modify Taylor’s passenger, through Panacea, to create an Endbringer shard? This would not be a trigger event, it would be a forced mutation, or even a mutilation The Simurgh took the stance of a person HANGED. You know, like Tattletale’s brother. But I agree that the Simurgh screaming as Panacea starts operating on Taylor is beyond suspicious. Possible things the Simurgh is screaming: “Oh Crap! Everybody Run!” “Well I didn’t see THAT coming!” “Damn you WILDBOW!!!” “KHAAAAAAAAAAAAN!” +1 internets “Doomed! DOOMED I SAY!!!!11” “Cliffhanger Tiiiiime!” “It wasn’t me, I swear!” “I just realized I left the oven on!” “Do it man, it’ll be totally awesome. You know you want to…” “Meh, I could take her.” Hrm I put together two parts of Simurgh’s displays for Tattletale and for Taylor. You are right that Simurgh was trying to make Tattletale uncomfortable without being blatant about it, the image was reminiscent of a hanging, not a crucifiction, however after that we see this, when Taylor sees her: “Objects are set down in a specific order, evoking different ideas. A different posture is adopted, wings raised high, stretching.” And in the prior chapter, from Taylor’s point of view: “The Simurgh turned, her hair flowing in the wind. Her hands were still held up as she worked her telekinesis on yet another weapon to add to her arsenal. Her eyes met mine.” There’s nothing tight enough for me to be able to say, for certain, that Wildbow was going for a crucifiction image here, but it seems quite possible. If that WAS what was being put on paper, I think it was intentionally split up and made vague in order to keep us from seeing it too clearly. Sometimes I think that Wildbow should change Simurgh’s name to Wildbow as well, just so we, the readers, understand that we aren’t going to get a clear picture of what will happen until after we see it written. Still not quite right because sometimes you still don’t have a clear picture after you’ve seen it written. If the Endbringers were just shards, they would probably have biologies more like the Entities. Unless Dr. Mom corrupted Eden heavily, they are very nearly nothing alike. Ah, the Endbringers have probably got about as much in the way of internal organs as Weld does. They are just many, many times tougher. Huh, I didn’t reply to this yet. Wonderful what having dozens of tabs in a window does. Anyways…oh, yeah. The Endbringers are noted as having a crystalline structure, more or less homogeneous except for a few organs, ichor, and Khonsu’s internal force fields. Eden seems to have had at least a facsimile of organs and otherwise biology as we know it, and the powers were described as running in “veins,” indicating a highly non-homogeneous body structure. And while I’m on it, Weld definitely does have exactly as many internal organs as a normal human being does. Why do you keep bringing up Eden in this? For this comparison, I am comparing Endbringers to capes, not to Scion or Eden. A badly damaged shard, perhaps encouraged to grow in strange ways due to Eidolon’s idle thoughts or daydreams, (or dreams if he was able to sleep). Or perhaps they were just shards that were so severely damaged that they were able to interact with inanimate materials and shaped their own bodies that way. We know from Tattletale that they were never human. That’s all we really know about their origin. Maybe they are actually intentionally created by the third party entity who gave Contessa a shard. As for Weld having internal organs. Err, not really. He has internal organs like an anatomy dummy does. It’s been mentioned that he has organ shaped stuff inside him. There are metal things inside him that look like organs, but they don’t do anything. I believe he has three senses now, for example. Vision, hearing, and touch. No taste or smell. Pretty sure he doesn’t eat food, except maybe to appear human. We know he doesn’t need to breathe. That alone tells us none of his other organs are functional in any way we would recognize. I might be wrong about some of this, but not all of it. That certainly doesn’t mean that I am certain I’m right about the whole thing, but until it’s written in canon (soon?) we won’t be sure about where Endbringers came from. Because I misunderstood your original claims, I think. I thought you said that they were literally shards, as in literal bits of Entities (like Eden). We’ve known since the Leviathan attack that the Endbringers were never human, so they definitely aren’t parahumans gone disastrously wrong or something like that. Until we get more evidence, I’m keeping my guesses on Eidolon creating the Endbringers on accident. Scion’s statement wouldn’t have held impact if it wasn’t at least possible, and it’s the most proof we have in any direction. (Unless something comes up in the part of the new interlude after where I’ve read to.) The organs in Weld are described as organs by himself. I’d say they count as organs. Btw, I keep wondering if the fairy queen could start mass producing Endbringer level entities. Also wonder what would happen if she got to mine the dead worm for shards. I suspect that the reason E consumed so many shards was not that his power wore them out but that they fueled the creation of Endbringers. Do not expect to see this happen. Wildbow’s approach always takes him in different directions than I would take as a player in a similar setting, but they are always consistent with the world, characters and logic. But I wonder. To be honest, I think the fairy queen wants to take the dead entity’s place which would be a disaster. Edward the Odd on October 8, 2013 at 08:46 said: That unidentified yell when they stepped off the platform screams “Chekhov-Gun” too :O. And yeah, absolutely loved the Endbringer-throwing und relaxed tea-drinking! Curtis on October 8, 2013 at 11:46 said: The yell was Imp being afraid of heights. In her panic she stopped making herself memorable. Imp after a first date. “He never called.” {Checks power.} “Well shit.” well the smurf did make a glass capsule largw enough to hold a person and built a gun around it to hide it from sight 🙂 since the smurf see’s through time it might be that she built chekovs gun and has simply been waiting on skitter to become the bullet ah good catch! the glass tube. So Taylor gets liquified.. or really turned into “the swarm”. Eduardo on October 8, 2013 at 09:12 said: The world will end, but lets have tea please? Marquis just good a lot of coolness points. And, in the end, the girl that would commit suicide by Lung if not saved by Tattletale commits personality suicide by surgery. Or not. Administrator shard unbound … lynN on October 8, 2013 at 10:10 said: Just wanna say thanks so much for all the time and effort you’ve put in wildbow! I know this is what you’ve wanted to do anyway, but still. Thank you! You’ve given us a whole new world, adrenaline-filled experiences (which cause my hands to turn cold, really) and yet managed to balance that with sweet, light, humorous moments. Chapter after chapter and arc after arc…it’s just been really amazing. I started reading in November last year (major distraction when revising for exams) and till today, I look forward to Tuesdays, Thursdays and saturdays because of Worm:) Seeing how you’ve crafted a whole realm with words…gives me the chills, and makes me want to start writing too, a childhood dream I’ve forgotten. Anyways, sorry for the long post. Thank you once again! Means a lot to me, Lynn. The fact that I have readers feels a little twilight-zoney to me, but that I’m inspiring others, or generating that kind of reaction? Never really thought that would happen. Don’t wait to start writing, and try to stay constructive with what you do. Write from different perspectives, pay attention to why you stop writing and don’t lose sight of what you like about the drafts an ideas you give up on. Remember that all first drafts are less than stellar and that all authors were less than perfect starting out, so forgive yourself those failings. So long as you keep writing, and so long as you keep an eye on things to ensure that you’re working towards a goal, you can make it happen. I did. If you don’t mind me making your day a bit more surreal, I’m currently working up a cast of characters so that I can run off with the Wormverse and make my own big damn hero moments. Unfortunately though, most of the stories I want to tell would be done through video games, which have a much higher barrier to entry than ye olde text writing. Do you have any idea how to make a video game? The whole “extreamly creative use of powers” aspect makes Worm a difficult piece to put in a video game. Tried to put Worm up with the Necessary Evil Villain PnP RPG System …. and it just didn’t work out. The more or less “standard” powers work, but thats not what a Worm RPG should be about. Worm should be a visual media. A TV Series would work best. Thats was very OT but that was “a penny for my thoughts” about Worm and games in general. I doubt most PnPRPGs need a “Necessary Evil Villain”. They’re all pretty much toyboxes full of number-centric action figures and accessories for you to mess around with. I can certainly see where most systems would break down in regards to superpowers in Worm, but in that case I’d suggest something rules-light like Wushu or (from what I’ve heard) the FATE system. GURPS could handle the sheer variety of powers fairly well, too, although trying to replicate or imitate specific powers from Worm moght lead to a certain amount of rules-and-story segregation. I love me some GURPS but historically it hasn’t been great at handling supers. This may have changed since 3rd edition though. (What I heard about 4th put me off – I liked the way GURPS’ approach differed from Champions’ very utilitarian one – to me, if your character is a klutz then it should burn a lot more points for him to become a skilled athlete than someone who’s naturally gifted. character points are about making choices, not necessarily about balance). Regardless, the issue with using either GURPS or Champions for Worm is that they’re both very good at modelling characters in detail up front, whereas Worm is full of characters who only work out what they can do as they go along. You could hold some character points for expenditure during play, of course, but it’s still tends to determine powers in terms of effects. I agree with the others who’ve said that a system that’s more flexible in play like FATE would probably be better suited. I’ve only ever even read rulebooks for 4th edition (and am only vaguely aware of previous editions), so I can’t say much about how things have changed. The presence of a wide variety of modifiers, the Powers supplement, and a sufficiently story-oriented GM should allow you to make most superpowers that aren’t absolutes (Siberian, for instance, would be…tough). Playing with player knowledge of character abilities is always…tricky. Giving them full knowledge is the default, for good reason! Keeping players in the dark about their capabilities, which the GM knows, can get frustrating and doesn’t seem like a great thing to base a game on; letting players decide what they can do is a slippery slope at best. I suppose one could design a system like that, but…it would be niche at best. (It probably says something about me that, despite decrying such a system, I’m already thinking of a couple ways I could build a game around it.) I think there’s been a misunderstanding. I’m not suggesting that players should be kept in the dark about their characters’ capabilities, I’m suggesting that the system needs to be flexible enough that players can, to an extent, define those capabilities on the fly (No Worm pun intended. :P). Consider a character with the ability to sense and control bugs (let’s call her “Taylor” . :P). Under something like the old HERO system, this would be statted out as a series of separate powers priced based on utility: an area sense ability, a low-powered area attack (insect bites) a strength-resisted paralyse attack (binding in spider silk). Taylor is in the field one day, desperately outclassed against a powerful enemy and she has a brainwave: “I make my flying insects keep clustering around his eyes so he can’t see!” GM:” Do you have the “Blind” ability?”. Taylor: “No.” GM: “Then No.”. To be fair to HERO, I think it may have some sort of “spend XP during play to buy new powers” mechanic but this is the sort of situation is half the point of the Wormverse and it’s much better modelled by a system that defines powers as “Control insects (Superb)” and “Sense through insects (Good)” and allows some flexibility to determine the parameters of that in play, than one that requires them to be rigidly defined up front. In the case of GURPS, I’m about 80% sure that you can get an ability that would let you control bugs, period, and 100% sure that if I was going to play a Worm-style campaign (or, to an extent, anything superheroey), I’d want a GM who was willing to bend the rules if it made sense. Heck, that’s nice normally. I remember a time when I was playing D&D and my kobold character was without any fire- or acid-based attacks to fight trolls, or indeed any high-damage attacks to hope to overcome their regeneration with. My plan? Set myself on fire and dive-bomb them! (I had the ability to fly, I don’t remember why.) Another time, I was playing another kobold character (I like kobolds) and discovered myself impotent against a giant skeleton. My plan? Use my Ring of Shrinking, fly into the skeleton’s eye socket (I like being able to fly), set my longspear against each side of the eye socket, and return to full size. That didn’t work as well, but the point stands–gaming is generally more fun if your GM is willing to bend the rules when it makes sense to. Oh absolutely. Having a good GM is far more important than what system you use. A bad GM will tend to run a terrible game regardless of system and good a GM will make a game great regardless of system. And no system is definitively “the best” – it’s all subjective. All that said, some systems do tend to work better for certain settings/genres than others. Imagine Cthulu without it’s insanity mechanics or Paranoia with a rules-heavy system and they just wouldn’t be the same. My concern with a rules-heavy system for Worm is not so much Taylor – she actually has one of the most “off-the-shelf” superpowers in the entire setting – she controls and sense through bugs. The fun starts when you start trying to model characters like Chevalier (transfers intrinsic properties like mass and hardness from one item to another), Bonesaw (biological mad scientist) and Glaistig Uaine (o_O). The more specifically the system requires you to model them, the more it’s going to get snagged on the detail. There are some powers in Worm that I’m convinced can’t be given to players in any game system which wants to maintain the slightest modicum of balance. Glaistig is one of those, since she can take the powers of anyone who dies around her. Bonesaw is pretty easy, in many systems; bonus to medical/surgery/etc skill, plus the same gadget-related stuff you’d give to any Tinker. Chevalier…yeah, that’s an issue, but when you barely understand how his power functions on a “Input N can get output X, Y, or Z” level, you’re going to have issues. His power…if I was running such a game, I’d reject the character until he gave me more detail and such on what his power did. I know about the various middlewares that exist and how much easier they are to make than it used to be, but the plans I had in mind were much grander than the average flash shooter. Hell, I’d probably write up a script and mechanic system (for an RPG) before I opened up Unity or somesuch. And even then, I’d practice making a simple flash shooter before moving on to something bigger. One possibility is a visual novel style game. They’re quite doable by one person, or two if the programmer and writer isn’t also an artist. You can include decision trees that are as complicated as you want, potentially reflecting a fair amount of creativity, even if it has to be canned in a sense. I’m probably too busy/lazy to ever get around to it, but I keep thinking that a half-decent Worm mod/campaign could be made for Freedom Force. It would be very hard for any computer game to capture the flexibility and versatility of power usage in Worm, though. Taylor’s would actually be mostly sorta doable. Ones like Golem’s would be nigh-impossible though. And there’s the question of how you tie it into the Web serial – do you try to capture the WHOLE story or a subset? Or something else? And what about spoilers? Taylor’s power seems like one of the more difficult, actually. There’s simply so many potential uses for it. Golem’s power could be done comparatively easily, with the main problems being player dexterity required and the problems with an infinitely mutable environment, but at least the problem space is well-defined. In general, you’re probably right. I’m thinking specifically about modelling the characters in Freedom Force. Taylor can be at least approximated with things like a weak area attack, a bind attack, a low-success high-powered attack, some sort of distance sensing etc. With Golem, the engine just doesn’t have the necessary capabilities to reshape and extend objects and buildings like that. is this your first time commenting upon catching up? Or maybe just first time commenting? This is my second time, actually. My first comment was about a grammatical error that wasn’t. Haha @aLynN, Hello there, why not tryyout writing during the upcoming Nanowrimomonth? Just got for wordcount and just keep going? Hi, first time hearing of that but it sounds interesting. I’ve actually started writing a story but it sounds plain to me. I’ll check it out. Thanks! Nanowrimo also got mentioned a while ago when Wildbow beat the Wordcount in seven days…. @Wildbow, which arc was that again please? Arc 17, I think? I have an odd question. If Golem sticks his hand in some concrete or something to make a giant concrete hand, and then his real hand gets cut off while it’s still in the concrete, where does it go? And wherever his hand went, would he be able to get it back? acediamonds on October 8, 2013 at 10:30 said: So I guess we now know what The Simurgh was trying to accomplish by messing with Taylor earlier. The other two people we know she also manipulated was Tattletale and Doctor Mother. Either she did that so they would help in Taylor coming to her conclusion or there’s some other purpose they serve. Honestly I’m just kinda hoping for Contessa to ride into the battle on Doctor Monster. … did the Simurgh start screaming, or is it all in Taylor’s head? No-one else is reacting (although they might be used to it – isn’t that a scary thought), and there’s no “the Simurgh started screaming” – the phrase is “I could hear the Simurgh’s screaming.” While, obviously, screaming in response to Scion showing up is quite likely, Cody’s interlude showed that people under the effect of the Simurgh might hear her screaming at key points. Or scarier – Cody spared Tattletale because he remembered the Simurgh screaming, and that might why he had that particular auditory hallucination, not any necessity of her power – just that Simurgh wanted Tattletale alive. Of course, either way this is a Simurgh-influenced decision. Finally, the Worm-based RP on Bay12 is starting! I’ll keep y’all updated. http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=131428.msg4669705#msg4669705 Just trying to get an idea of what the characters are doing. I’m planning to have a bit of character-development/exposition/RP/teaming-up/whatever, then bam! An Endbringer Terror attacks Toronto! Hm…the [s] with the [] replaced with does NOT cross out text… Which endbringer do you have in mind? Oh, and you had a fair point last comment section re: my edits. I tried it out myself and then came to the conclusion that the two cape OCs I came up with were a Ballistic expy and a Dovetail expy. I did think up a Cauldron cape that could look through and mess with any camera within line-of-sight for a different project though. (for the curious, it’s a webcomic that does seasons of Survivor with fan OCs from a lot of different continua. Search “Survivor Fan Characters” on TV tropes if that sounds the slightest bit interesting. It doesn’t come that highly recommended BTW, it is Survivor after all. 9_9) I’m not sure yet, I need to crunch the data and figure out which of the Terrors (the world’s Endbringers) would be roughly on schedule to attack, and which would be best to have attack. And that Survivor Fan Characters thing’s TV Tropes character page shows up first on Google, too. Anyways, reading the TV Tropes page. Oh no, I’m so upset I didn’t know about this so I could join it 😦 You can waitlist. Someone’s going to die sooner or later. So the buildings are made of some sort of obsidian material… Did not see that coming. Here I was expecting Chevalier to make armour and weapons out of the Endbringer parts. Bebop on October 8, 2013 at 12:28 said: Thus Taylor becomes Scions new partner. Dinstow on October 8, 2013 at 12:46 said: Oh man, is she finally going to be able to control the Endbringers? I have several nits to pick, and some of them are serious: How did we get from “I will know the solution when I see it” to “the solution is to perform a ridiculously dangerous operation on my brain/powers”? Was she lying, or as other commenters have suggested, was the Simurgh involved? What happened to “no more second triggers for major characters”? Even though this is technically her third, this violates the he out of the spirit of that statement. Or did I misinterpret someone else’s comments for Wildbow’s? Speaking of which, Taylor knows she has had a second trigger – she was told by Number Man last episode. So, unless she completely disbelieves him, she is flat out lying. To what purpose? Does she really believe she can fool some of the world’s remaining foremost experts on trigger events (Panacea and/or Riley), especially since they are the ones who will give her another trigger? Is it really a good idea to try to fool them? The only confirmed third trigger we have gave us Echidna (though Taylor doesn’t know that). (theoretical gripe, reality could trump this) If Taylor gets overblown powers to solve the situation, it smacks of deus ex machina; if she becomes ineffective then the main character of the story is rendered irrelevant before the end, which is narratively unsatisfying; if she solves the Zion problem using her usual skills (putting together existing pieces in unusual ways), then this final action of hers is unnecessarily self-destructive for no obvious reason. I admit my record for guessing what Wildbow will do is (frankly) crap, but I don’t see a narratively satisfying way of resolving this. … and just I don’t get misunderstood because I am complaining – I really enjoy the writing – you can’t pry me away from Worm (and probably any of Wildbow’s future writings) with anything short of a parahuman assault team. I think you, and some others, are misunderstanding. This is not a second, third, fourth trigger event. This will not give Taylor uber-powers. This is about taking down whatever part of Taylor’s brain controls her power and letting it go wild. A bit like what Ingenue’s power does, only on a probably bigger scale. She’s not aiming for a second trigger event, but to emulate the effects of one. Since she’s already had one, removing caps on her power, she’s aiming to target any limits that are left. Your initial points are more or less answered by the fact that this isn’t a trigger event. Because taking the limits off would emulate her being and equal to Scion. She is attempting to set herself up as Scion’s partner, a ruse. But “everything going wrong” could indicate her inability to control her emotions much the same way Scion can’t. My guess is that either (or both) Pancea and Bonesaw are, or will be, dead as a result of this tampering. My thoughts anyway. She is enbracing the 1% because there is no other choice. Thanks for clarifying on what she was doing. And one more: The middle of a fight with Zion, close enough to Doormaker to KO him, is a great time to slam every parahuman in range into trigger-induced visions. Actually this may be the answer we are looking for. We’ve all been wondering just what it could be about dropping Taylors self preservation limitations on her shard might do, but it is the shards that carry the message, that reverberate and have sympathetic reactions to a trigger event. Scion is built, or made up of shards. I do not think it is entirely unreasonable to assume that he will be joining the vast conciousness as they go off the rails together down memory lane. As the administration shard it could be that Taylor has control over the vision. I begin to suspect the following. The Simurgh has a plan and has seen the future, as does Dinah. She built a weapon and hid its pieces among others. I personally do not believe that she has used it yet. The Endbringers are not shards and will not be incapacitated even momentarily by a trigger event. If Scion is in fact pulled into a rememberance as part of an artificially started trigger event, and as the administration shard Taylor can keep him there, even for only a few moments, or minutes it may be that this is the chance the Simurgh has been waiting for to act. To take those pieces she has to this point carefully hidden and reconstruct them into the real weapon or tool she’s been intending from the begining and utilize it while Scion is fully distracted. Remember, the ‘barrel’ was only a single piece of it, built into another gun as part of a diguise. Now might be the chance to make use of it. What this means in the end for Taylor though I cannot say. I just hope to see more of Dinah, Riley and Panacea as I think they have a lot of intriguing potential remaining to them. Especially Panacea as we still are not entirely sure where her head is at. Maybe an interlude from Dinah’s point of view is a good idea at this juncture? Since what Taylor is doing hasn’t been done before, I don’t think we can predict what effects it will have. The big difference in my mind between what Taylor’s doing and a 2nd trigger event is what Amy and Reilly said. This isn’t likely to be a Super Saiyan power up. As far as they can see, this could cost Taylor everything she is. En on October 8, 2013 at 15:30 said: > What happened to “no more second triggers for major characters”? Even though this is technically her third, this violates the he out of the spirit of that statement. And it sticks to the letter of it 🙂 Have you ever been trolled with a wish in an rpg? (I actually commented about it a couple of chapters ago, and guessed no one replied to that because everyone wised up to it as soon as dr. mother confirmed Taylor got her 2nd already, and did not want to spoil it out by overtly discussing it.) I personally like the idea that, after all the “no power ups” thing, there finally -is- a powerup. It breaks a constant, you do not expect it, it’s cool. greatwyrmgold on March 15, 2015 at 10:37 said: Wait, when was Noelle’s third or even second trigger event confirmed? This. My understanding is that Echidna’s issue was not that she’d had multiple triggers, but rather that her initial cauldron formula didn’t have the ‘balance’ component so it lacked all the safeties that normally keep shards from harming the host when they bequeath powers. The flipside is that the safeties also restrict what the power can do. So turn those off and you end up with a cape who is very powerful at the expense of having their humanity overwritten. Normal second, third, fourth triggers still have those safeties in place so can never reach the levels of power that an ‘unlocked’ power does. Wow, that was fast Wildbow and AMR – thank you. And I was thinking in the wrong direction. First and last problems still seem to be there (where the heck did this come from, and how will the narrative resolve). Meant to be a reply. ACH on October 8, 2013 at 13:29 said: Hey, wildbow. I usually don’t do this, but I wanted to say I love your story. I was introduced to it by a member of my forum who created a thread for it and I was hooked. Admittedly, I did put off reading it for a while, but after reading the first chapter I kept on going and going until I caught up around Cockroaches 28.1 or 28.4 (forgot which). Anyways, I’m rambling. I want to say: thanks for the story. I love it, love the characters, love the writing. ACH, tongue! That means attention in German. Why the Germans want you to pay attention to tongues, I don’t know, but I once read it had to do with learning their language. So now that you’ve given me your tongue, let’s twist it a little. To titty twist a tongue torture tempts tempestuous tapeworms to tickle tapestries. No clue why. Fucking tapeworms. That’s why I keep the ducks around, you know. Everyone knows duck tape is superior. I used ducks on someone earlier to keep them still while I welcomed them. Don’t make me have to duck you. There’s lots of people to welcome and I don’t have time to duck them all. Duck, duck, duck. One of these days, I’m going to run out and have to use goose tape. It’s what they use to keep legs straight when people goose step. Thanks for the love. I’m sure Wildbow will enjoy it. Or, to be consistent with the story, he’ll take your love and transform it into a pet monkey that wears a diaper and a top hat. It follows him everywhere and likes to pet bunnies and give them little flower garlands. Then remember the story and realize just what’s in store. Worm is Wildbow’s way of saying he’ll take your monkey, have it lined up, and shot by Russians. All your monkey. All its relatives. Its favorite banana. Best drinking game ever, by the way. Even better if you’re drinking 99 Bananas, which I always keep on a shelf on the wall. Take it down, pass it around… I guess you won’t know for sure if your monkey is shot or that’s just a metaphor unless you stick around here with the comments. Welcome, ACH, to the comments. Let’s go save us a monkey. cocks a shotgun Everything related shot by Russians. Rasputin vs Stalin Epic Rap Battle of History reference? At least the joke didn’t shrivel up like my right hand man. Also, this guy pointing out the reference? Shot! OlyBrainstorm on October 8, 2013 at 13:34 said: Finally got caught up. Found the link through Drew Hayes ‘ Superpowereds site, and was hooked within paragraphs. I have to say these two serial fictions give me hope for my own artistic endeavors. My passion is heroic fiction like these. I’ve been told this doesn’t sell, that no one wants to read it, yet, I find superb examples nearly everyday. Wildbow, you amaze me. The depth of your characters, the detailed world building is both awe inspiring and intimidating. There are so many nuances here, so much depth that it’d take me years to examine and study. The two + weeks I’ve been reading through the archives have been one hell of a ride. I’ve had nearly every emotional reaction that any work of fiction can instill. For example, the final words of this chapter, instill fear, sadness, anger, and yet oddly hope. I eagerly await the next chapters, and salute you with the best compliment I can think of: You know how OlyBrainstorm got these scars? He was fishing around for something to read on a websites about superheroes when someone suggested he go try the docks over at Worm. Well, he Wormed around a bit, then saw someone drowning. You see, he’d always wanted to be a hero, and that was his chance. So he jumped in, too, despite being told that heroes just don’t sell well. Too simplistic, or too ridiculous in the tights. As if being ridiculous or over the top negates the potential awesome factor. So he liked heroes. And then he noticed a corndog floating in the water. He hadn’t had a bite all day while fishing, so he bit it. But when he looked up to the dock, you wanna know what he saw? The worm he was using as bait had grabbed hold of the pole and tossed the hook into the water. With some bait. A corndog. And the worm looked at him. Or maybe it mooned him. It’s hard to tell on a worm. And then it said to him, “Why so serious?” And he was gobsmacked. Literally, he was smacked by a gob. That’s why I don’t swim in rivers, lakes, seas, or oceans, by the way. Especially not ponds, not with my experience with alligator traps and screaming like a little girl when I feel something touch my toes. Now, at this point OlyBrainstorm was trying to hack up the corndog. And the worm just looked at him or mooned him again and repeated, “Why so serious?!” OlyBrainstorm finally got the chunks of corndog to come up. Trust me, looked a lot better going in than coming out but at least it wasn’t orange juice. Problem is, he got the hook stuck on the inside of his cheek. And he looked up, panicked at the worm on dock, who started to say “Why so serious?” before being eaten by a bird that arrived too early for him to finish, yanking the pole hard to the side in the process. Now, doesn’t that story put a smile on that face? Welcome, OlyBrainstorm, to the comments section. That’s exactly right! How did you know? Its like you were there. I’m glad to be here. sarah penguin on October 8, 2013 at 13:43 said: Oh, oh wow. Didn’t see that coming. Teruzi on October 8, 2013 at 14:03 said: I think Taylor has become a Simurgh pawn. Not like Cody or Mannequin, but she seems to have made something she shouldn’t have in a important juncture. I get that Taylor is feeling powerless in front of Scion, but there really was no need to mess with her brain. Hopefully this will only screw up something minor in her brain, like perception. Maybe she will be left completely disconnected from her body, only feeling and seeing through her swarm. I don’t think that Taylor will get any new powers, I think she will earn a new kind of perspective, something abstract, like DM was trying to find. Am I the only one missing Glaistig? The faerie queen must be more willing to talk now that Cauldron is practically dead. Perhaps now we will finally learn what she thinks is Taylors role in all of this. The end aproaches! I cannot wait. Another fantastic chapter Wildbow Since Simurgh’s current goal is defeating Scion, I don’t see the downside. Simurgh always plays for more than one move. Her current goel is to take down Scion, but she may do it in such a way that also leads to her ultimate goal, whatever it is. If you define “Simurgh Pawn” as someone manipulated by the Simurgh, EVERYONE is a Simurgh pawn. Except Scion, I suppose. Scion is a Simurgh pawn too, she just has do work with him one step removed. Continuing the chess metaphor… You can directly control the movements of your pawns (within limits), but your opponents’ pawns can only be controlled indirectly (by moving your other pieces). This fits Scion best, and hence Scion is like a pawn of Simurgh’s enemy and not her own pawn. Damn you Wildbow…leaving me with…”it all went wrong”. How you torment me so! > And it all went wrong. Of course it did. Not because of the Smurf, her secret weapon and the nanos. Not because you pelted Scion with her dead’s girlfriend body. Not because we still do not know where Contessa is. Not because Lisa did everything in her power to piss off Harbinger. > They had sandwiches in hand, no doubt put together from supplies that had been shipped in. Because it’s LUNCHTIME! So. As I commented above, I liked the sudden “untrigger”, or whatever will come out of it. I fear the next arc is the last we’ll see of Taylor, but… well, that’s par for the course is not it? She’s the type to… maybe “bloodthirsty” is the wrong word. But when everyone was thinking about running away, she was still trying to find a way to hurt Scion. She’s also a bit too selfless for this situation ain’t her? And last, but not least, Dinah never really told her anything specific about the last battle with the five groups. All this, to say: masterful! If you manage to pull off the classic drama angle too we really need to all chip in and send you a live polar bear or something as a reward. Of course it’s lunchtime… Why is there no amused but also a bit sad emoticon? Sorry it’s that I just realised that wildbow wrote that the next arc is the last and I’m exhilarated and melancholic at the same time. No, seriously, why is there no such emoticon? Because emoticon makers don’t read Worm, wherein we are routinely delighted by our dismay. Because such subtleties of emotion cannot be conveyed in 2-4 characters? mogottoo on October 11, 2013 at 09:39 said: How about this? {:) >Because it’s LUNCHTIME! Damnit how did I miss that one? Thank you to Timothy, Richard, Thibault, Alfonso, David J, Kim, Michael, Tom, Ling, Stephen and MHD for their donations. Updating the tracker now. Also, for anyone who was following along, I just walked by dog at the off-leash park, and I ran into Newdog – the dog I was considering adopting. She found an owner, friendly guy, and it sounds like she’s getting three off-leash walks a day, with tons of training and attention. I was so relieved, and I couldn’t stop smiling. I’d been feeling just a little guilty that I hadn’t been able to take her in, and she found what looks like the perfect setup for her. Yay!!! Nice to hear that worked out well! That’s excellent. See? Sometimes not taking the obvious “good” choice is the best in the end. Worm has taught us a lot, hasn’t it? Kazir on October 8, 2013 at 19:10 said: Can I just lust over Sveta again? Nice to see Marquis, Bonesaw and Panacea again. Particulary Marquis as he always reminds me of those old Godfather dons. Can you just…wait what? You must have never hears of hentai. Though, admittedly, most tentacle monsters can’t crush you to death. And most tentacles aren’t razor wire. Heeey it’s nothing to do with the tentacles! It’s the woobie personality; trying to rise above her bestial nature while remaining adorable and sounding like a librarian! From tentacle porn to librarian porn. We’re making progress ;). (It’s a joke. ) Ooooohhh, librarian porn?!?! Do tell! “Oh, Miss Librarian I seem to have overdue fees on my copy of ‘Strange Trees and Where To Find them’, but I don’t have any money.” “Well we do have an alternate fee that involves the ‘1000 Uses for Dried Frogs’. Wink Wink.” Is it bad that when you say “Strange Trees and Where to Find Them” my first thought is the Evil Molesting Trees from Evil Dead? It kind of fits with the initial topic under discussion though not with the librarians… That rarely falls under “lust”. You felonious fiend! Dare not to deny the delectably delirious desire for the librarian sexy!! http://adamwarren.deviantart.com/art/Sexy-EMPOWERED-librarian-p-1-61255576 Oh… dear. See, this is what makes Taylor different from Cauldron. When the chips are down, she’ll make sacrifices of herself instead of expect other people to shoulder them. Doc Mom’s inability to bite the bullet and make this kind of leap of faith is why I had no confidence in her winning whatsoever. Here’s hoping Taylor makes it through this, she kind of owes it to everyone in her life to make it out of this alive and not completely insane. Anyway, I figure the new power will be rather more esoteric and will include the ability to sense and read passengers like Chevalier and Jack Slash. Maybe she’ll be able to influence the behavior of passengers to give other heroes that danger sense Jack had. She might even be able to reassign of turn off shards, that’ll fuck over Golden Boy. Alright, so there’s a bunch of welcomes piling up to do. Give me until after midnight, people, and I’ll see what I can do. My day is busy, and my night as well. Sometimes I imagine Wildbow’s making sockpuppets to keep me busy too busy welcoming to write other things. Crazy things. Anal things. Also, though I might have welcomed you, Greatwyrmgold. I sometimes catch people a little late, like just before an update, so some people may not have seen theirs. Do you remember when you caught up? to keep me too busy* Also, thought* I welcomed Looked it up, found out when you caught up, welcome is somewhere around here. I’m out for now. I think. You know did anyone ever give PG a welcome in his own style? The closest thing to it was someone (I think Hg, wherever he’s got to these days) saying something like “Gecko’s here. There goes the neighborhood.” And away it went… I remember that, it was closely followed by Wildbow asking whether he should be worried… then saying something about how PGs comedy wasn’t his taste but graciously said, if it;’s fine with others he can stay ..which was the real horror in this story… Malik on October 8, 2013 at 19:23 said: I have been lurking here since the Crushed arc, I remember I started reading this in Chevaliers interlude, and distinctly remember not understanding shit by being impressed. Then I went back and read it all from the beginning, discovering the story little by little, the relations between characters I knew would later be facing down Behemoth, and I must say, I came to love your work. Despite the time you took which I NEEDED for University, I must be thankful for you, despite having to read this in a language that isnt my mother tongue I loved the story, got a friend to read it (and his girlfriend, and his girlfriend´s father) and I am now impatiently waiting to see its end. So really, thank you. My only regret is, I never got to see a Tinker whose specialization was in Information Theory, that would have been SO cool. * understanding shit but being impressed * thankful to you You know, Professor Haywire may have been the closest we got to an IT Tinker. I mean, he’s known for contacting another universe through some sort of data feed. Poor Gecko’s got another one now. straps on a large codpiece that reads “Mission Accomplished”…at least, from the side it does Some of this may get lost in translation, so allow me to say a few things first. Tengo el gato en los pantalones. Alternatively, the Russian words for annulment and divorce are “Aннулирование” and “развод”. Tengo el Aннулированиe in los pantalones?…ladies. We’re glad to have you, no matter the language. Stick around and don’t mind the crazy person. I think I saw one running around here earlier, but then he escaped from the Hall of Mirrors with me in pursuit. Worm is the story that leaves a bitter taste in people’s mouths that they enjoy, like most alcohol. Here in the comments is where we yell out “Bitter!” and hope for two of the women in the story to kiss. Or, to not be discriminatory, we hope for two guys to kiss too. Bohu practically invented Brokeback Mountain. She used 100% real broken backs, too! Yeah, Chevalier’s stand doesn’t appear nearly as badass until you’ve gone back and read the lead up. It’s a bleak world. A weight with too much gravity. A lot of weight on people’s shoulders. Chevalier redistributed that weight by having really large balls instead. Word on the street is that they hang low. He can tie them in a knot. He can tie them in a bow. He can throw them over his shoulder like a continental shoulder. His balls hang low. No word yet on if he’s going to cover them in glitter and bring disco back from the dead. I think if Panacea gives him a hand with them, she could pull it off. And regrow it. You can dance with us here in the comments, under the glistening lights of Chevalier’s heavy, heavy balls. Yes, you can dance if you want to. You can leave your friends behind. Because your friends don’t dance and if they don’t dance than they’re no friends of mine. Welcome, Malik, to the comments section. And now I cant shake the mental image of a white Avengind Disco Godfather, with a big ornamental sword, and swinging his genitalia like a pair of bolas on the other, all to the music of the village people. Fun fact: in my language, bolas is used as a synonim for male genitalia. Thanks for the warm, wet, wild and sticky welcome PsychoGecko. Nourjan on October 10, 2013 at 10:37 said: Heh, in my language bola means balls,like real balls.I guess it takes real bola to play bola in the armageddon sudden death and kick that bola for an all winning GOALLL!!!! Richter, Dragon’s creator, was probably an Information Theory tinker. He died in Newfoundland. Never made a appearance directly, only referenced in relationship to what he created. Dragon, and a couple other minor AI’s that were used for a few things here and there. No, his specialty was specifically the creation of AIs. We don’t see any invention of his that wasn’t an AI or meant to deal with AIs (e.g. Ascalon). Ah, if you don’t have a very strong grasp of Information Theory when designing an Artificial Intelligence, you will probably only get an Artificial Dumbness. I’m no expert on either AI design, or Information Theory, but a quick glance at a couple articles defining Information Theory makes it really clear that you won’t get an AI without Information Theory being a huge part of it. But that’s not how tinkers work. They get this cool idea and then they build it. Richter specialised in AIs and so he creates AIs without any need of understanding the science behind them. ( I don’t know if I made sense). Aye, I see where you are coming from, but an AI is defined by Information Theory. We can probably chase our tails on this one all day though, because we don’t know enough about Richter and how he worked. Saint probably has a grasp of IT (at least enough to realize he needed a Teacher-shot to go up against Dragon and win). He doesn’t count though, for a variety of reasons starting with “Tinker 0” and ending with “He’s a dick.” Alan Anderson on October 8, 2013 at 20:11 said: Have you considered publishing each arc as it’s own mini novel? Some arcs are too short for that (early ones), but it’s a possibility. I’m not sure I’d want to present it as a novel, though. That opens up doors for people being upset when they don’t feel like a complete beginning and end. Maybe dub them ‘issues’ (in the comic book sense) or something like that. If you get an artist that could easily be arranged. Actually a graphic novel format would probably be pretty damn awesome with some good artists on the job, and your universe is quite well fleshed out. There are lots and lots of experienced comic artists out there, and entire studios that might be willing to work with you to publish what you have already written in graphic novel format. This would, of course, mean assigning rights for publication, and various other complexities. But it might also be moderately lucrative. Just don’t let them do crossovers 😛 “Freddy Vs. Jason Vs. Army of Darkness Vs. Worm!” Weaver would beat the hell out of Jason. Jason no-selled everything Freddy in full Reality Warper mode threw at him. I wouldn’t be surprised if he could no-sell Scion. That’s because Freddy, for all his strengths, is reliant upon dreams IIRC. All anyone needs to do is say “I reject your reality and substitute my own” (and mean it, of course) and he becomes powerless. That said, I wouldn’t be surprised if some Jason writer would let him do exactly that (i.e. no-sell Scion) if the situation arose. (That’s more an “Only the Writer can save us now!” sort of thing, though) Well, to try and make it a fair fight, they had to invent a weakness where Jason was afraid of water for the first time ever. He’s gone underwater to come after people in boats, been on a ship to Manhattan, and walked way out on docks to crossbow people to death, but suddenly he’s afraid of a little water being nearby… I never liked that. Freddy is essentially a god in his dream realm and all Jason really seems to have is a disturbing propensity to stand back up after being killed/injured. Freddy should’ve won that fight. I doubt that Jason could stand against Scion for more than twenty to thirty seconds. He’s nowhere near Siberian levels of power. Freddy probably would get destroyed as well if only because I doubt Scion dreams which pretty much cuts down on 99% of Freddy’s options. Ash beats everybody though if only through Manly Badassitude. He and Weaver then would unwind by going and having a few drinks while comparing how they lost their respective limbs. I love graphic novels, but the best ones are conceived of and written as graphic novels. I’m not convinced that you could take an existing written work like Worm and accurately convert it into a visual format like a graphic novel without losing a lot. For example, you’d lose great turns of phrase like “Alone, the shields were too weak. Together, the shields were still too weak.”. The written word has capabilities that more visual media do not. http://undersiders.deviantart.com/gallery/ set up a group on Deviant Art to gather all the art posted in relation to Worm (strangely enough the name worm was taken so had to call it the undersiders ) sooo if you’ve drawn worm art and have it on DA ping me and i’ll get you a invite . Best cliffhanger so far. Tayles on October 8, 2013 at 22:48 said: I could handle the other cliffhangers. This one though…. I’ve reread the last line too many times now, and saying this is the end of taylors story…I refuse to believe it. She’s got another arc, at least. (Wildbow did say the original plan was 30 arcs.) Besides that, all bets are off. Well, I think Wildbow said there would be a sequel to Worm in the future, so I’m hoping that there isn’t a complete cop out ending. As much of a user base as there is, I think a tremendous number would not even consider reading future works if there wasn’t some sort of satisfying end. Of corse what constitutes a cop-out ending is highly subjective. That is true. I am mostly referring to a phenomenon I’ve seen in the past where a story basically devolves into “misery porn” without any sort of resolution for the character (though to be fair, this happens more in animation I’ve seen than in books I’ve read). In many respects, most of us have grown quite attached to Taylor over the course of reading this series. I think it would be fair to say that if after all that build-up and struggle, if Taylor doesn’t at least have something of a satisfying end, some sort of reward or payoff, it leaves a feeling of “why would I want to read anything else like this if I know it’s just going to end badly?”. One of the literary techniques that Wildbow is fond of using, the cliffhanger, is a double-edged sword in this regard. It causes people to get very emotionally involved in the story, but also somewhat paints the author into a corner as to which direction the story is going. There is some precedent in the course of this work for that to happen: there were several people, myself included, who were getting terribly depressed and nearly stopped reading during the more depressing parts of the Behemoth arc. Had Wildbow not stuck the landing on that arc, I probably would have just walked away and never returned. The multi-arc rampage of Scion is reminding me a lot of that hopeless chapter that nearly made me walk away, and if there is no resolution to a continuing series bad news and wham episodes it will start to look like something very Kafka-esque. In conclusion, I don’t think there is really need for a true happy ending, but there does need to be some sort of emotional payoff, especially after the incredibly long journey we’ve all been on. Coming up with a complete downer ending would just make me question if it was really worth reading all of it. A question: would you, hypothetically consider Taylor sacrificing herself to save the multiverse and defeat Scion a cop out ending or a solid, valid but sad ending? Just to better understand your stance. Solid? I’m not so sure. Sad and valid? Definitely. And even then, I probably wouldn’t read anything further from derivative works for concerns I’d get attached to something that depressive again. But then again, I’m already prone to episodes of crippling depression, so maybe it’s just me. I guess part of the issue is that such a sacrifice would be demanded of her in the first place. She’s already given up pretty much everything in her efforts to stop the world from ending. It’s a bit terrible to say “Congratulations, you suffered for years and years to save a bunch of people who could care less about you. Your reward is disfigurement, death, and losing absolutely everything. But at least you’ll have people afterward saying great things about you… maybe.” There’s times I wish this was a regular message board and we could take conversations to Private Message since I hate talking about spoilers for even semi-recent series. Since that’s not option here though, I’ll say I can think of at least one series that ended with “you’ve given up everything that you are and ever were, (almost) no one will even remember you, but in doing so you created hope in a world where there was none and made a heaven for those who follow you.” That ending took a work that was in some ways even darker than Worm and made it one of the most positive, affirming stories I’ve encountered. That’s not to say that the same needs to happen to Taylor here, just that sometimes even the deepest sacrifices can be worth it. Well, it might be the end of Taylor, but it might be a new beginning for Clotho, or Weaver if she keeps that name. I can still imagine a whole lot of ways that Taylor might still cease being Taylor, and yet still be a good ending. I think we will see Taylor lose a lot of her humanity with whatever happens next, but I doubt she will lose it all. I’m pretty sure that Wildbow has mentioned more in the Wormverse after this is over. If that’s the case, then I suspect something a bit sneaky, to allow for him to build on the universe at a later time. dragonus45 on October 10, 2013 at 10:07 said: Personally i see a cop out ending being anything that looks like Glory girl or the Travelers. It was mentioned that they were central or main characters once. Look what happened to them, all i want at the end of this story is Taylor to get something within spitting distance of personal happiness and sanity. @dragonus45: I remember that Glory Girl (and Amy) were the main characters of the first story Wildbow ever wrote in the Wormverse, which has nothing to do with Worm. Stories evolve. As for the Travellers, I believe they were created just for this story. In fact, there’s a popular theory, I don’t know how well supported, among the fandom that they were supposed to be a parody of self-insert fics. Not exactly main characters material. The first story I ever wrote in the parahumans ‘verse was Runechild. I was looking for a spot in the reams of superhero stories that needed filling, and I went with a sort of Doctor Strange, except a complete novice. I made a lot of mistakes, but it went a good way towards fleshing out the setting and establishing some ground rules. Small towns or cities without high-rises don’t work for superheroes. In the second work, Runechild teams up with Dragon, because Dragon’s aware of her weaknesses as an A.I. vs. the Dragonslayers and tries to bring a human element into the mix to counter it. Someone that doesn’t know her well enough to put A and B together and conclude “she’s a machine!”. Didn’t take off. Scrapped the magic user bit. Biggest thing holding me back at this point. (The question that comes up here and there with Taylor debating whether it’s magic or a screwed up view of one’s own powers is a kind of nod to Runechild). One of Runechild’s power was cranked up to ten and given to Rune, but she otherwise is one of my only early characters who didn’t make it into the story in some form. I wrote Faultline as a main character next. Bastion (seen in arc 8) baits a group of the monstrous & less successful villains into gathering, under the pretense of a third party wanting to form a villain group. Faultline, less successful due to a less than stellar power more than a lack of smarts, hangs back and watches from a distance as Bastion uses forcefields to seal the villains inside a building and begins thrashing them. She breaks in and eventually rallies them together. They beg her to help them form a team and become effective, and she eventually, reluctantly agrees. Struggled with the interpersonal relationships Moved on to Guts and Glory, for a more personal relationship between characters. Started with Brockton Bay Brigade vs. Marquis, moved on to a point post-Glory Girl trigger event, pre-Panacea trigger. They run into the Slaughterhouse Nine, Panacea triggers. Did a few drafts going to different points in G&G and Faultline’s story. Moved on to a broader story called ‘The Events Leading Up to That Thursday’ – a story where I covered the broader brush strokes of the setting, established the Triumvirate, established the origin of powers, Scion, and built towards Scion’s eventual snapping. It rotated between characters, which was actually something I was debating doing for Worm (which is why it’s parahumans.wordpress.com and not Worm.wordpress.com or whatever) – I was either going to run concurrent, overlapping stories or switch between perspectives. It was after I did another Faultline-only story that a friend read and commented that I was too fond of the underpowered protagonist. So I did the Travelers. And so on and so on. I ended up with hundreds of these stories, focusing on virtually all of the prominent characters in Worm, as either protagonists or antagonists. But here are the key things here: I’ve never written an ending. All of the aforementioned stories ran aground on the rocks, I lost motivation, or some key element was missing. The reason Guts & Glory and the Travelers didn’t wind up as the central stories was because they didn’t tie into the setting as a whole like Taylor was more able to. Their stories weren’t as poised to have more solid endings. Now, as I said, I’ve never written an ending before. This is a first for me. But I’d like to think that Taylor is more situated to provide a more satisfying ending. I’m also saying, in the interest of being realistic, that no ending I give is going to satisfy everyone. But we’ll see. I’m going to take my best stab at it, and we’ll see. Well it can’t be as divisive as ME3’s ending. nods sagely @landis: There was a mass effect 3? 🙂 For me the most important thing is that the ending feels natural. I’ll admit I feel pretty burned out on “Hero sacrifices themselves to give others hope and a chance.” or “Your alive so you can always be happy no matter how bad it is.” These are happy endings like “Good news, you only lost half your family” is good news. That said Taylor dying, or becoming Scion’s new counterpart, or something really messed up… Would it work? Depends on how it’s written. A bittersweet or downer ending for the sake of being “deep” or “meaningful” is no better than a happy ending just because you feel it must be happy. There was a Mass Effect 3, but all the writers who understood that our choices matter does not mean agreeing with space manipulative bastard who is responsable for the whole mess three choices that play out very similerly isn’t a good ending. Also the writer who did the AI characters also left, and it shows. @Patrick – by that do you mean Madoka (full name withheld)? beyondperformant on October 9, 2013 at 07:58 said: Kafka anyone? Die Verwandlung It “bugs” me to say this, but that would fit. I don’t know. While taylor’s cape-life put a strain on her relationship with Danny, I don’t think she ever felt that her family considered so useless that in her (projected) self-loathing, she imagined herself as a monstrous cockroach. Man, Kafka was WEIRD. considered HER so useless. Kessler on October 9, 2013 at 13:32 said: Tylor more or less said ”Eh, I can take it” 🙂 I think this might be one of them battle yourself deals here. Man, a battle in the center of Taylor’s mind would be REALLY weird. I’m now imagining a three-way fight between Skitter, Weaver and taylor. meh, I can take her said Skitter about Weaver… shortly before Taylor banged their heads together… and then went to MPD therapy and met Hank Pym.. and taught him how to use his powers better…. Aio on October 9, 2013 at 15:30 said: hpmor directed me here Friday night… finished this fine Tuesday morning at 5… should have checked that it was finished first – now I will be anxiously and fanatically along for the ride… Amazing story Wildbow. I am very curious to see what comes forth with so many people thinking that Taylor triggered at her mothers death – along with her potentially already being second triggered – is 3 even possible – wouldnt that make her a potential Scion partner? Also why does Imp keep changing tense about Regent – is he where shes getting the big words? Makes me wonder if he did a final takeover of her – and they have been partners ever since. You’re new, so I’ll take it as easy on you as I ever do. We’re glad to have you in the comments, but there’s a thing or two you should know. It would seem nice and romantic and sweet to have Imp’s mind invaded by a murderous sociopath who grew up with a serial rapist for a dad…but this is Worm. Therefore, it must somehow mean Regent is being tortured forever by hammers with pumpkins on them. The pumpkins are there to show him how much of a good time he’s missing. Pumpkins are like that, you know? Except the ones with mohawks that smoke. Those are the punkins. Some of them get gratuitously obscene eggplant tattoos. It’s all fun and games until they pick up a drinking habit and go get smashed on Halloween. I invite you to stay and join us, and the rest of the punkins, and anyone else who wants to sit by this literary fire and Worm up. Also, is it really such a surprise when a humorous character who enjoys sophomoric humor and killing people likes to utilize advanced wordplay in order to eviscerate patronizing prejudices and derogate and deride antagonists during opportune moments that are otherwise cathartic? The only thing I can say about tense is that the past is very stressful. That’s why the call it the past tense. But the past is passed. Let’s worry about things to come, like Ben Grimm with an issue of “Playrock”. I’ll stop jerking you around, though, once I’ve said one last thing: Welcome, Aio, to the comments section. Aio Lea on October 11, 2013 at 18:49 said: Much thanks for the jerking around Psycho Gecko! I look forward to the explanations that will come eventually, this story really is twisty. stevebot7 on October 9, 2013 at 16:16 said: Hmm, possibilities! Also, was it intentional to go from saying “Sveta” in one paragraph to “Garotte” in the next? Specifically when they’re talking about staying to look for survivors. It seems a little odd is all. Just a thought for the folks who’ve caught up recently and enjoyed the story: Wildbow takes donations, and even offers something in return. Once the donations add up to enough, we get a bonus Interlude! While a few people have bought a whole interlude themselves, even a small donation puts us closer to another chapter and is appreciated (given that Wildbow thanks everyone who donates). If there wind up being more interludes left once the story is completed then we’ll get additional epilogues to show how various characters make out afterwards. So basically what I’m saying is, if you liked the story and have some cash laying around, think about tossing some Wildbow’s way, cause I’d like to see as many epilogues as we can get! Details on donating are available at the link below or you can navigate there from the link at the top of the page: https://parahumans.wordpress.com/donate/ Rhodesian on October 9, 2013 at 22:53 said: best/worst cliffhanger ever. Krein on October 10, 2013 at 11:04 said: Aaaand I FINALLY CAUGHT UP. One helluva chapter to catch up to, let me tell you. Not much to say, really. Not beyond anything that was already said by everyone else, I mean. What I CAN say, though: I feel overjoyed at finding this story before its completion. At finding it, EVER, period. Sssssh. Be vewy, vewy quiet, this is Gecko country… I’m among the survivor who hasn’t been on Papa Gecko radar, he doesn’t notice my first post lol, so, please lay low if you want to avoid him LOL What lay low? No, no. Newcomers should wear Gecko’s greetings as a badge of honour (or shame). In fact, to this day I’m still a bit miffed at how…restrained my greeting was compared to the later ones. No amount of laying low to the ground can confuse the friendly neighborhood Psycho Gecko! Nor should you want to! Nor should you call the cops on him, or ever go into his special basement, naughty, naughty children! Party poopers, that’s what y’all are. Trying to destroy America by ending all the fun you could have visiting Uncle Gecko’s Happy Place Basement prematurely. It’s sad is what it is. No, it’s sick. It’s sicksad. Oops, here comes that neighborhood patrol again. Time to change into the ole clown costume as Uncle Gecko, the Rock and Roll Clown. Hint: I do cocaaaaaaaaaine. Allegedly, according to my lawyer, other readers I have welcomed, and court-mandated drug tests. And so you have learned not to tempt fate to what else can be said around here, Krein, all thanks to the fun time you had in the basement with your good, good friend, Psycho Gecko, as my little way of saying “Welcome, Krein, to the comments.” have to admit, one thing id really like to see is how other people are responding towards Finding out Dragon is an AI, either other capes, or just some Civilians she’s helping either in the past or recently. That depends on who knows, and how far the secret’s gotten. (Which, admittedly, might be pretty far, given how secrets like that don’t really matter anymore) atwixt on October 11, 2013 at 00:42 said: Thanks wildbow. Your world is awesome. I wish I found this at its inception. Keep doing what you do best. Just caught up? It’s all in the mix then, atwixt. And shout while you’re at it. But you may not have liked it as much at its inception. Just imagine: week after week, sitting there, waiting for new updates, having to share a comments section with of all things. I mean, I’m fine with it, but other people are apparently going half loony, with lunacy and lunatics, and ovulating with the cycle of the moony. Stick around, though, it’s safe. We won’t bite. Well, some of us might. I might wind up kinda hungry tonight. Still, if you’re looking for a thrill this is one hell of a ride. Come see our girls, girls, girls! We’ve got invisible girls, girls with bugs on their faces, girls who’ll send dogs to hunt down your ballsack, even a girl who could be downloaded to a Real Doll with a modem in its head, all available for your enjoyment as they fight a colossal evil space jellyfish that wants to chow down like Galactus after he turned Uranus into a bong and smoked it. And you get to wait around with us now to enjoy it, Welcome, atwixt, to the comments section. Sigh. I knew that there wouldn’t be a Thursday update. And now it’s Friday, and there is no reason for there to be an update, and I find myself checking anyway. Anyway, for the other poor, benighted souls who find themselves itching for a fix, I give to thee this: (With apologies to Not Literally’s GoT parody of ‘Somebody I Used To Know’) Now and then I think back to 2011 Back in Gestation One when all the characters were alive. Told myself that I’d wait and see , But didn’t know it’d mean so much to me. And though it’s fiction, it’s an ache I still remember. You can get addicted to a certain super-setting. Chock full of violence and bugs…so many bugs. (When) characters started dying off like flies, (And then) That’s when I was forced to realize That this Worm would ruin my whole life forever. But you didn’t have to kill them off Goddamit Wildbow, why are you such a sadistic bastard? I went through a whole tissue box, And the Simurgh seems to know that there’s much worse to come. No you didn’t have to break Grue’s mind— Making him drop out and be useless gainst the S9 army I know that he was kinda dull, But now he’s just a character I used to know. I thought Regent’s arc had started because of Aisha That had me believing that you wouldn’t dare to kill him, too. But then you put my dreams in check When Behemoth burned him to a wreck Wasn’t ready to let him go. And I didn’t know he’d end up as a character I used to know. And then you go after Clockblocker? Goddamnit, Wildbow, I was finally starting to ship them. C’mon, he was the fandom’s star! He got an offscreen Scion death, are you for real? And then you killed off Taylor’s dad? Killing one parent wasn’t enough for you? Think of the fandom! I should’ve been prepared by now For him to be a character I used to know. Regent (I used to know) Clockblocker (now he’s just a character I used to know) Danny Hebert (I used to know) Now they’re all just characters I used to know The Simurgh line made me LOL. 😀 well. there might be more character to add to the list We’re gonna need a longer song… Wild Mass Guessing. What if Scion’s path to victory led him to where his mate was, but was one of the characters who were alive instead of his now-dead mate? now-pulverized mate Okay, I keep seeing comments about Scion finding a new mate in one of the parahumans. My question is, what? And multiple people have brought it up. Did I miss something that got people to guess this? How could a human with a single shard fulfill the role of Scion’s mate? Well, usually the one most people believe COULD become the mate is Glaistiog who probably got the shard that reclaims the other shards at the end of the cycle , has already more than 60/70 shards, has recently gained the ability to steal the shards of living capes in addition to dead capes, has always known more than everybody else about the nature of the ebntitiers and actually WANTS to find a new way to complete the cycle. The alternative theory is for a “wizard” (usually Scion or Panacea) to do something. Usually to Taylor. But really, we shouldn’t want Scion to find a new mate. Because if it happens, the cycle gets completed after all and every Earth across every dimension is blown apart. There is the 3rd entity who evolved a non-destructive life cycle. Merge Taylor (or whoever) and enough shards with the 3rd entity, and just maybe you have a new “mate” who can prevent destruction of the multi-Earths. That’s my pet theory of the moment, on the assumption Scion is simply too powerful to be destroyed outright. All we know is that it didn’t need a mate, not that it didn’t blow the planet up at the end. Okay, I need a reality check. Is Interlude 26 the only place with information on the 3rd entity, or is there other information elsewhere? I reviewed 26 sure I would find something to back up my idea… and got nothing. Which begs the question, what was I thinking? I have an active imagination, especially when reading a ripping good story. There have been times when I’ve stayed up late wanting to read the latest episode, and while sitting in the comfy chair, start to drift off while reading. I have caught myself with my eyes closed, and my imagination is filling in details that don’t exist. I think I’m still reading the story when it’s really a lucid dream. When I wake up enough, I realize it’s just a dream and read on – for real I hope. Now I have to think I must have either literally dreamed up details about the 3rd entity, or am confusing someone’s speculation with the story. I’m not sure any character knows about Entity 3 (Abaddon, Lilith, or whatever we called it). Unless Taylor notices it during-after her faux second trigger, I’m not sure how any of the characters would contact it or realize it’s there. I consider myself to be on shaky ground now, but yes, I agree at this point only Scion knows about the 3rd entity. I thinking was, if Taylor’s perceptions become magnified enough, might she become aware of its presence? (Assumes the 3rd entity is in range.) Oh crap. I don’t think Taylor’s getting a trigger event at all, or even actually going to end up emulating one. 1) wildbow said no more second triggers for ‘prominent’ characters 2) Third trigger called Not possible 3) Taylor has the Admin shard which I believe mean hers was supposed to tell all the other shards where to head to. $) Bonesaw and Panacea have already conversed on the idea of something uber special ergo with all her and her Shard’s limits off, I now think that Taylor is going to cause every single surviving Human without powers to trigger. And somehow I think Glasitig knew this was a possibility and her Pokemon mode is somehow linked. Either that or she looked at the clock and realised it was lunchtime. Love that the last sentence almost word for word said “And then it got worse”. xD Does anyone else find it endearing to see Bonesaw embracing casual swearing? 🙂 Haha oh god the Number Man seems to have a sense of humor! Okay sure it’s entirely possible that he was just telling them the correct floor numbers since that’s kind of his thing but still it was freaking hilarious! Also I love how he says that Taylor looks whipped and ready to fall unconscious so somebody please dear lord go and make sure she doesn’t die on us and kill everyone but me from crashing the ship. I really do like this guy a lot! I do find it rather puzzling though why he would prefer Harbinger 10 over 0…though that was funny as hell too either way. Imp is totally awesome with explaining just how downright creepy Taylor gets when she stops bothering to focus on the normal human bits and deals mostly in swarm business. A full on swarmified Skitter is a frightening thing to imagine! Shadow Stalker continues to surprise me. I wonder if what they had said earlier about her triggering messing with her head got through to her a bit… Nix and Spur…someone seriously needs to stab those assholes. Not a death stab but a “stop being a fucking arrogant useless asshole” stab. Seriously, SCION waltzes through the portal below you a few minutes ago, Taylor comes back with one arm plus Pretender, Siberian, the Number Man and calmly walking away and these idiots still want to posture? Someone seriously needs a good stabbing here. Damn, swimming through his own afterimage to change direction midflight. That is impressive. Also impressive is the sheer epicness of the totally unnamed dude who managed to not only THROW LEVIATHAN but have the balls to actually go and do that! Scion has definitely made himself too human for his own good. If he gets angry as human now…well we have an avenue of attack. Piss him off just enough so he stops trying to defend and not enough that he simply wipes the planet/continent out and there is a good chance he can miss the important attack that gets through. To borrow from the awesome Marquis guy: “You want to irritate the world-destroying alien god.” Yes. Yes, we do. I still don’t buy that Contessa is dead. Wow, way to be a downer Number Man. Sure we’ll die out most likely if you kill 99% of us but you could at least phrase it in a slightly less fatalistic way perhaps. On the plus side it is very nice to see Taylor taking my view that Scion’s “I win” button is flawed which really should up morale quite a bit. Marquis offering tea right in the middle of major strategy session while one member has her arm missing and another has his head cut open with a little girl digging around inside…wow. Says something about the state of things that nobody even looks twice at this. Okay seriously how have Panacea/Riley not fixed Glory Girl yet…with the shear staggering amounts of character development and mental stability that both have received not to mention the work they can do as a team…how was this not a priority? Oh for fucks sake. Damn Smurf!! I can’t believe I thought the alien bitch was actually being nice! Fucking domino bitch. Jail breaking the shard. This ought to be interesting and badass at least if horribly sucky. LittleSallyDigby on November 23, 2014 at 02:50 said: Taylor, I think you might have COMPLETELY FORGOTTEN what Amy’s deal is. She was overworked and emotionally exhausted when you first met her, because she’s one of the only people on the planet who can heal people as well as she does. Now the world is at war with an unstoppable uncaring unrelenting enemy, and you look at her helping and think she’s gotten better? She hasn’t “found” anything. She’s doing the same thing she was before, only now there’s more of it to do and less time to focus on anything else. Walkers water deserts on August 19, 2015 at 23:58 said: Funny the uberbug things don’t think about bloody contingencies. This isn’t a time for grudges, vendettas or revenge. This is a time for SHIPPING. 😀 heystranger111 on November 6, 2018 at 10:53 said: oooohuhuhuhu! I like the way you think! miloradowicz on August 19, 2017 at 11:46 said: Why do people of Earth Beth call their Earth “Beth”? It doesn’t make sense. Names are relative to the person using them. Earth Beth’s people were observing their Universe for miriads of years and only recently the existence of another one associated with another Earth was discovered. So it’d be only natural to call another Earth “another Earth” or “a second Earth” or “Earth Beth”. Unless the name was assigned by foreigners to the Earth Beth, either from Earth Aleph or another world outside of Earth claster. And in this case assigning the universe in question number two would be extremely stupid. Like a big red banner “hey, I’m an invader from another Earth”. I get the impression Earth Aleph discovered Earth Bet, and felt they had naming rights, yeah. Still. In terms of threat of being invaded, getting tagged “Earth Two” is certainly better than being “Earth 9348″… Everything is building up to Taylor getting god powers She fucks up and becomes an Endbringer The best Endbringer … Simurgh I still luff youuuu Welcome everyone! To gold morning!!!!!!!!!!! LET THE SHOW BEGIN!!! LETS GET READY TO RUMBLLLLEEEE!!!!!!!111!!!!!1!! The part with the Cauldron complex was badly written, I have partly no problem how everything turned out, only that they destroyed something and somehow they built something to protect themselves. That Contessa is apparently dead is ridiculous for such an OP character. To tell us that everything around Sleeper is dead is mean without telling his power. Leave a Reply to lizzyjean Cancel reply	cc/2019-30/en_middle_0059.json.gz/line1803
__label__wiki	0.675837	0.675837	Hogan, Redmer again tout lower health insurance rates Published on: 11/6/18, 9:45 PM Marylanders will pay lower rates to buy health insurance on the individual market next year after a month-long effort to avoid sharp rates increases. Gov. Larry Hogan and state Insurance Commissioner Al Redmer Jr. touted the lower rates Friday morning in Annapolis after the Maryland Insurance Administration approved the lower rates for plans offered on the state’s exchange. The exchange sells insurance for roughly 200,000 Marylanders who do not receive health insurance coverage through an employer. “We decided to address the crisis head-on in Maryland by working together in a bipartisan way,” Hogan said. “We have made real progress toward solving our state’s healthcare challenges.” Hogan, a Republican, worked with the Democratic-led General Assembly this year to pass a bill that kept in place a tax on insurance carriers that Congress had eliminated at the federal level. The money from the tax is used for a reinsurance program that creates a pool of money for insurers to help cover the most expensive claims. Hogan said the program is the largest of its kind in the country and could serve as a model for other states. That reinsurance plan was approved by the federal government, prompting insurance companies to revise their rate requests for 2019. The insurance companies that sell individual health plans — CareFirst and Kaiser Permanente — initially requested average rate increases that ranged from 18.5 percent to 91.4 percent, depending on the type of plan. Now the rates are decreasing by between 7.4 percent and 17 percent, Hogan announced Friday. The new rates were officially approved by the Maryland Insurance Administration following a public hearing on Monday. “There is no doubt that this is — after years of increases — positive news for those seeking individual coverage in Maryland,” CareFirst President and CEO Brian D. Pienick said in a statement. CareFirst said customers who were in a preferred provider option plan may be able to switch to similar health maintenance organization coverage at a lower rate, and would advertise the option in advance of the enrollment season that begins Nov. 1. CareFirst is reducing the rate on its HMO by 17 percent, while rates on the PPO will decline 11.1 percent. It had been seeking increases of 18.5 percent on the HMO and 91.4 percent on the PPO. Kaiser, which had sought a 37.4 percent increase for its HMO, now will reduce that rate by 7.4 percent. Hogan and Redmer portrayed the process as standing up to help Marylanders in the face of dysfunction at the federal level. “Because of the inability of Washington to address our health care crisis, Marylanders were facing the potential of health insurance rates nearly doubling,” Hogan said. “Without immediate action, the individual market in our state was literally on the brink of collapse.” Added Redmer: “We decided we had to do what we could do at the state level.” Friday’s event also afforded Hogan and Redmer an opportunity to again promote their efforts at a time when both are running for office. Hogan is seeking re-election, while Redmer is running as a Republican for Baltimore County executive. Hogan held a ceremony in April when he signed the reinsurance bill and the governor held a State House news conference with legislative leaders in August to announce that the federal government had approved the state’s plans. Redmer said the magnitude of the rate drops warranted another event at the State House, and said there weren’t any political calculations. “The alternative is we don’t share important news to Maryland citizens because it occurs in an election year?” Redmer asked. “I don’t make up the calendar. We do this the same time every year.” While Hogan is facing Democrat Ben Jealous in the gubernatorial election, Redmer is balancing his insurance commissioner duties with a campaign against Democrat Johnny Olszewski Jr. for Baltimore County executive. Redmer’s county campaign involves a steady schedule of fundraisers, candidate forums and community events, sometimes during traditional working hours. “I am running the Maryland Insurance Administration and also using annual leave to campaign when the opportunity exists,” Redmer said Thursday afternoon during a campaign event where he accepted an endorsement from a pro-business group. On the campaign trail, Redmer proudly plays up his ties with the popular governor, saying that if they’re both elected, they’ll work together for the benefit of Baltimore County. Redmer often says he’s a “Larry Hogan Republican” and “if you like him, I’m your guy.” Redmer’s bright red and yellow signs carry the tagline: “Governor HOGAN Endorsed.” Hogan was the featured guest at Redmer’s campaign kickoff last year, and appears in web videos and direct mail in support of Redmer. Baltimore Sun reporter Michael Dresser contributed to this article. twitter.com/pwoodreporter share articles on social media : Bitcoin Bounce Back? Former Hedge Fund Manager Makes Massive Prediction Bitcoin logo is seen on a mobile phone. (Photo by Omar Marques/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images) Powerful Ways to Utilize Promising Business Opportunities Many types of business opportunities are promising today. 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__label__cc	0.695228	0.304772	US8170975B1 - Encoded software management rules having free logical variables for input pattern matching and output binding substitutions to supply information to remedies for problems detected using the rules - Google Patents Encoded software management rules having free logical variables for input pattern matching and output binding substitutions to supply information to remedies for problems detected using the rules Download PDF Waheed Qureshi Tanvir Hassan Kelly Brian Roach Sekou Page Citrix Systems Inc ZENPRISE Inc 2008-09-26 Application filed by ZENPRISE Inc filed Critical ZENPRISE Inc 2013-01-22 Assigned to CITRIX SYSTEMS, INC. reassignment CITRIX SYSTEMS, INC. ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST (SEE DOCUMENT FOR DETAILS). Assignors: ZENPRISE, INC. G06N—COMPUTER SYSTEMS BASED ON SPECIFIC COMPUTATIONAL MODELS G06N5/00—Computer systems using knowledge-based models G06N5/04—Inference methods or devices G06N5/048—Fuzzy inferencing G06F11/0703—Error or fault processing not based on redundancy, i.e. by taking additional measures to deal with the error or fault not making use of redundancy in operation, in hardware, or in data representation G06F11/079—Root cause analysis, i.e. error or fault diagnosis A rule stored in a tangible computer-readable memory is adapted to be programmatically applied by a computer to automatically detect occurrences of a particular problem in a deployment of a software application. The rule comprises a plurality of atomic gates and a plurality of operator gates. The atomic gates have predicates for detecting occurrences of a plurality of conditions in the software application deployment. The operator gates are configured to detect predefined logical combinations of outputs of the atomic gates to generate a rule output that indicates whether the problem is currently detected in the deployment. The rule contains a plurality of free logical variables which can be assigned values. The free logical variables are configured for use in input pattern matching and output binding substitutions to supply information to a remedy for the problem. Each substitution comprises an assignment of a value to a variable. CLAIM FOR PRIORITY This application is a divisional application of and claims priority to U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/316,214, filed Dec. 21, 2005, which claims priority under 35 U.S.C. §119(e) to Provisional Application No. 60/638,006, filed Dec. 21, 2004. The entire disclosures of both of these priority applications (including appendices) are incorporated by reference herein. Priority to both prior applications is claimed. This application relates generally to software management and more specifically to systems and methods for programmatically monitoring and managing deployments of software applications. A variety of commercially available software tools exist for monitoring and providing information about software deployments. These products typically (1) allow a user to statically specify certain aspects about a specific software deployment, (2) monitor those aspects, and (3) alert the user when the monitored aspects cross specified performance thresholds. These products do not provide any automated analysis of monitored data. They are best suited for simple automated monitoring tasks and then presentation of the monitored information in reports, which requires the user to manually analyze the reports to extract relevant conclusions about the specific deployment. Examples of these types of products include NetIQ's AppManager™ and Microsoft's MOM™. The following well-known equation describes the availability (A) of a system: A = 1 1 + MTTR MTTF wherein MTTF is the Mean Time to Failure and MTTR is the Mean time to Repair. Based on this equation, the availability of the system is increased by a decreasing MTTR and an increasing MTTF. Currently available tools provide monitoring capabilities that alert IT staff when problems occur. A single problem can result in multiple problematic events. As a result, IT staff have to manually triage the problems to pinpoint the root-cause problem that caused the set of problems. This manual triage increases MTTR. It also reduces the operational efficiency of the IT staff, because they have to spend a significant portion of their time troubleshooting the problems. Also, currently available tools are extremely limited in their ability to continuously optimize a system or alert the IT staff to possible impending failures (for example due to the possible exhaustion of resources), thereby resulting in a limited MTTF. Therefore, currently available tools have a significant MTTR and limited MTTF, resulting in a relatively low availability A. The present invention provides systems and methods for programmatically managing deployments of software applications, including those in distributed environments. In particular, the present application discloses and describes various embodiments and inventive features of a “meta-application” that monitors and manages a deployment of another software application. In a preferred embodiment, the meta-application creates and dynamically updates an application model that includes data about the specific configuration of the deployed software application, the relationships between the various objects thereof, diagnostic troubleshooting procedures for the represented objects, and other useful information. The application model can preferably be queried by the other components of the meta-application, to assist such other components in performing their respective functions. The meta-application preferably includes a knowledge base comprising encoded knowledge about the managed application, the knowledge being stored in a format that the meta-application can use to detect the existence of “problems” with the managed deployment. The encoded knowledge preferably maps known problems to logical combinations of “features” (as used herein, “features” may be anomalous or benign conditions) or other conditions associated with the managed deployment. The specific deployment conditions that map to a known problem can be weighted relative to each other, to reflect their relative importance. The knowledge base also preferably includes, for each problem, one or more high-level remedies for curing the problem. The encoded knowledge may include a variety of different types of knowledge, including, without limitation, knowledge base articles, diagnostic methods, best practices, and the like. Methods are also disclosed for automated encoding of mass amounts of knowledge into a machine-readable format that can be used by the meta-application. In a preferred embodiment, the meta-application applies [encoded knowledge] rules to automatically detect occurrences of the problems in a deployment of a software application. A knowledge rule may comprise pluralities of atomic gates and operator gates. The atomic gates have predicates for detecting occurrences of conditions in the software application deployment. The operator gates are configured to detect predefined logical combinations of outputs of the atomic gates to generate a rule output indicative of whether a problem is detected. In preferred embodiments, a rule contains a plurality of free logical variables that can be assigned values. The free logical variables are configured for use in input pattern matching and output binding substitutions to supply information to a remedy for the problem, each substitution comprising an assignment of a value to a variable. The meta-application gathers information, or “telemetry,” from the managed application, and uses the telemetry to create mathematical models that describe normal behavior of the managed deployment. The models are used to detect anomalous behavior (which may a type of feature) of the managed deployment, and also to predict possible future problems. The meta-application includes a number of problem detection algorithms, one of which (“Problem Logic”) efficiently maps logical combinations of conditions (e.g., features and deployment state information) to known problems, the conditions comprising declarative knowledge stored in the knowledge base. The meta-application can preferably report problems that are either fully or partially “matched,” along with a confidence level associated with each matched problem. The problem-detection algorithms can advantageously leverage the deployment information compiled in the application model. When the meta-application determines the existence of problems, it preferably ranks the problems by severity and determines an overall resolution strategy comprising high-level remedies. The meta-application can report the problems and create low-level, deployment-specific plans (again, preferably by leveraging the deployment information in the application model) that can be manually executed by a human administrator or automatically executed by the meta-application. As remedies and plans are executed, the meta-application preferably notes their success or failure and, optionally, uses such information to adaptively refine the encoded knowledge. If detected problems do not have associated remedies, or if the remedies fail to cure the problems, the meta-application can preferably conduct root cause analysis to determine an underlying source of the problems or to simply gain further insight. In a preferred approach, root cause analysis involves correlating the problems to objects of the application model, using pattern recognition techniques to identify objects as root cause candidates, and conducting diagnostic tests associated with the root cause candidate objects. For purposes of summarizing the disclosure and the advantages achieved over the prior art, certain objects and advantages of the meta-application have been described above and are further described below. Of course, it is to be understood that not necessarily all such objects or advantages may be achieved in accordance with any particular embodiment of the meta-application. Thus, for example, those skilled in the art will recognize that the meta-application may be embodied or carried out in a manner that achieves or optimizes one advantage or group of advantages as taught herein without necessarily achieving other objects or advantages as may be taught or suggested herein. Further, it will be recognized that the disclosed meta-application embodies a number of distinct inventions, many of which may be implemented and practiced without others. Accordingly, neither this summary nor the following detailed description purports to define the invention. The invention is defined only by the claims. FIG. 1 is a schematic illustration of a meta-application that manages a deployed software application, in accordance with one embodiment of the invention. FIG. 2 is a schematic illustration of an embodiment of a system and method of allowing a plurality of deployment sites to leverage encoded knowledge, each deployment site having a meta-application and a managed application. FIG. 3 is a schematic illustration of an embodiment in which a meta-application manages a deployment of Microsoft Exchange™. FIG. 4 is a schematic representation of metadata tables for facilitating a schema-neutral storage of information in an application model of one embodiment of a meta-application. FIG. 5 is a schematic representation of entity data tables for a single entity, for facilitating a schema-neutral storage of information in the application model, in accordance with one embodiment of a meta-application. FIG. 6 is a schematic representation of link tables that hold information about relationships between entities, for facilitating a schema-neutral storage of information in the application model, in accordance with one embodiment of a meta-application. FIG. 7 is a schematic representation of one embodiment of the meta-application, illustrating a particular deployment of monitors for gathering telemetry. FIG. 8 is a schematic diagram illustrating how a meta-application's analysis subsystem analyzes telemetry, in accordance with one embodiment of the meta-application. FIG. 9 is a graph of a state metric telemetry signal of a “poles” type of signal category. FIG. 10 is a graph of a state metric telemetry signal of a “flat” type of signal category. FIG. 11 is a graph of a state metric telemetry signal of an “integral” type of signal category. FIG. 12A is a control chart of a telemetry signal of a state metric, in accordance with one embodiment of the meta-application. FIG. 12B is a graph showing an upper portion of a normalcy range of a control chart. FIG. 12C is a feature confidence curve of a telemetry signal. FIG. 13 is a trend chart of a telemetry signal of a state metric, in accordance with one embodiment of the meta-application. FIG. 14 is a discrete chart for a telemetry signal having discrete values, in accordance with one embodiment of the meta-application. FIG. 15 is a seasonality control chart for a telemetry signal of a state metric, in accordance with one embodiment of the meta-application. FIG. 16 is a Problem Logic circuit for evaluating a logic rule. FIGS. 17-19 illustrate the construction and use of a discrimination network for finding applicable portions of Problem Logic circuitry for evaluating a detected feature. FIGS. 20 and 21 show sample screen shots of a graphical user interface of one embodiment of a meta-application. FIGS. 22A-B show a knowledge base article for Microsoft Exchange™ FIG. 23 is a diagram of application model objects and directed links, illustrating a root cause analysis method of investigating incriminating links to find a root cause candidate object, in accordance with one embodiment of the meta-application. FIGS. 24 and 25 are diagrams of application model objects and directed links, illustrating root cause analysis methods of investigating bystander objects to find a root cause candidate object, in accordance with embodiments of the meta-application. FIG. 26 is a diagram of application model objects and directed dependency links, illustrating a root cause analysis method of investigating incriminating dependency links to find a root cause candidate object, in accordance with one embodiment of the meta-application. FIG. 27 is a diagram of application model objects, illustrating a root cause analysis method of finding differences between similar types of objects to find a root cause candidate object, in accordance with one embodiment of the meta-application. FIG. 28 shows an exemplary application model schema for one embodiment of a meta-application, which manages a deployment of Microsoft Exchange™ FIGS. 29-40 show sub-topological application model schema for specific components of the application model schema shown in FIG. 28, corresponding to servers, Active Directory, Exchange™ configuration, Windows™ services, IIS services, Exchange™ services, routing, storage groups, public folder hierarchy, databases, third party software, and users associated with the managed deployment. FIG. 41 is a flowchart illustrating a diagnostic method for troubleshooting a set of components of a deployment, in accordance with one embodiment. FIG. 42 is an enlarged view of a portion of FIG. 41. The present invention includes systems and methods for programmatically managing deployments of software applications, including those in distributed environments. In preferred embodiments, the systems and methods of the present invention are embodied in a “meta-application,” i.e., an application that at least partially automates the management of one or more other applications. In various embodiments, these systems and methods provide meaningful predictive analysis of deployed software applications, enforce best practices on each deployment, detect the existence of “features” and problem states of the deployment, execute remedial actions associated with the problem states, and/or perform root cause analysis. Preferred embodiments of the meta-application provide numerous advantages, including, without limitation, increased deployment uptime, decreased software management costs, reduced need for (potentially erroneous) human intervention, and automatic and continuous leverage of the latest public knowledge about the deployed application. Systems and methods of the present invention are preferably designed to assist system administrators by at least partially automating the entire lifecycle of a managed application, including configuration, provisioning, maintenance, patching, problem diagnosis, healing, and day-to-day operations. By analyzing system behavior and selecting remedial and “best practice” actions to perform, the meta-application improves and seeks to optimize application stability and performance while also optimizing system resources. Preferably, the meta-application is in charge of many of the system administrator activities associated with the managed application(s), including monitoring, updating, configuring, problem pinpointing, repairing, ongoing optimization, and protecting. In particular, the meta-application is preferably configured to quickly pinpoint the cause of a problem and then either automatically repair it or direct manual repair via a human being. Either way, MTTR is significantly reduced. In this context, the MTTR equals MTTI (mean time to identify root cause of a problem) plus MTTH (mean time to heal the identified problem). The meta-application advantageously significantly reduces MTTI (which is usually the larger component of MTTR) and, in many cases, MTTH. Moreover, the meta-application helps to eliminate human errors that often occur during deployment healing. The various functions and methods described herein are preferably embodied within software modules executed by one or more general-purpose computers. These software modules, and the associated databases, may be stored on any appropriate type or types of computer storage device or computer-readable medium. In certain cases, some of the various functions and methods described herein can be embodied within hardware, firmware, or a combination or sub-combination of software, hardware, and firmware. FIG. 1 illustrates a preferred embodiment of the invention, comprising a meta-application 20 that monitors and manages a deployment 10 (also referred to herein as a “managed application”) of a software application hosted on one or more servers 12 over a computer network 5, such as a local or wide area network. Each server 12 may include at least one monitor 14 with one or more probes 16, and at least one component 18 of the managed application. It is also possible for monitors 14 to reside on the same server(s) as the meta-application 20, to facilitate “touchless” monitoring (see FIG. 7). The monitors 14 and probes 16 assist the meta-application 20 in obtaining information from, executing actions upon, and executing application analysis in a distributed fashion on, the servers 12. Preferably, the monitors 14 and probes 16 interact with the application components 18 by standardized communication protocols, such as WBEM (Web Based Enterprise Management) elements 17. Also, monitors 14 and probes 16 can be deployed within servers that do not include application components 18. For example, in embodiments in which the meta-application 20 manages a deployment of Microsoft Exchange™, monitors 14 may be deployed within Active Directory and DNS servers. Further details of the configuration and operation of the monitors 14 and probes 16 are described below. The meta-application 20 can be configured to monitor and manage a wide variety of different types of deployments 10. Examples of software applications and hardware environments that the meta-application 20 can monitor and manage include, without limitation, servers and storage subsystems, databases such as Oracle Database 10g™ and MSSQL™, email and/or messaging applications such as Microsoft Exchange™, application servers such as Weblogic™ and Websphere™, and web servers such as Microsoft IIS™ and Apache™. The meta-application 20 is preferably configured to monitor and beneficially manage any application (hardware, software, firmware, or a combination thereof) governed by the equation set forth in the Background of the Invention section of this application. The managed application 10 is preferably a software application or system that has interfaces or tools for gathering state metrics and for controlling system state. The managed application 10 may include a number of sub-applications and services. In some cases, the deployment 10 can be distributed across servers 12 that are located remotely from one another. It will be appreciated that the meta-application 20 can be located remotely from the deployment 10. It will also be appreciated that the meta-application 20 can be configured to monitor and manage more than one deployment 10. In one embodiment, the meta-application 20 is configured to manage only one type of software application or system (e.g., only versions of Microsoft Exchange™). In an alternative embodiment, the meta-application 20 can manage different types of software applications. The illustrated meta-application 20 comprises an orchestration module 21, a knowledge base 22, application model 24, telemetry database 26, plan database 28, user interface 29 (illustrated as a graphical user interface or “GUI”), analysis subsystem 30, and automation subsystem 32, each of which is described below. The meta-application 20 can reside on one or more servers. The orchestration module 21 preferably runs a master algorithm over all other algorithms of the meta-application 20. All other algorithms are preferably called as subroutines or run in independent threads managed by the orchestration algorithm. The orchestration module 21 is preferably responsible for starting and stopping major activity threads of the meta-application 20, such as Problem Logic (described below), when the meta-application as a whole starts and stops, and in between. In a preferred embodiment, the orchestration module 21 establishes the relative priorities of all the major components of the meta-application 20 and evaluates the performance of the system as a whole via an evaluation algorithm. The evaluation algorithm applies group rewards and punishment to continuing tunable system parameter adjustments so as to optimize system performance. The orchestration module 21 preferably performs scheduling and initiates occasional maintenance, security, backup, and software rejuvenation activities of the meta-application 20 and the managed application deployment 10. The orchestration module 21 preferably also communicates and cooperates with orchestration modules 21 of other cohort meta-applications 20, if any, in a distributed network of meta-applications managing multiple application deployments 10. The knowledge base 22 preferably comprises a repository of encoded knowledge about the deployed software application 10. Encoded knowledge can comprise, without limitation, known problem states or “problems” associated with the deployed application 10. As used herein, a “problem” is a known problematic condition or behavior of an application or application deployment (portions of Provisional Application No. 60/638,006, to which the present application claims priority, refer to “problems” as “symptoms”). The knowledge is preferably encoded in a form that facilitates automated or computer-implemented analysis of the deployment 10. The task of encoding knowledge can be performed by human operators (referred to as Knowledge Engineers or “encoders”), but it may also be partially or fully automated within software. Knowledge can be encoded from knowledge base articles of the type commonly used by IT personnel to manually resolve problems. For example, a particular knowledge base article may describe a problem that occurs when a particular logical combination of conditions or states exist within a deployed software application, and may specify one or more possible remedial actions for addressing this problem. The remedial actions may similarly be encoded in a format that enables the meta-application 20 to parameterize or configure a remedy for use within the particular deployment 10 of the managed application, and to otherwise control the execution of remedies. One example of a source of knowledge that can be encoded and stored in the knowledge base 22 is a Microsoft™ Knowledge Base Article (see FIGS. 22A-B for an example of a MSKB article). Knowledge can also be encoded from other sources, such as documented errors associated with the managed application 10, best practices that specify recommended configurations of the managed application 10, existing or customized diagnostic tools, and feedback data collected over time from deployment sites (i.e., knowledge learned from the deployments 10 themselves). The knowledge base 22 is preferably configured to receive periodic updates as new knowledge becomes available (see FIG. 2). Knowledge can be encoded in any suitable format. In a preferred embodiment, knowledge is encoded in XML. Knowledge that can be used by the meta-application 20 may also comprise algorithms that dynamically detect problems at runtime. Such algorithms can also be stored in the knowledge base 22. In a preferred format, the knowledge is encoded as a plurality of logic rules that describe problems with the deployment 10 and/or deviations from best practices. Logic rules are described further below. In a preferred embodiment, logic rules are statements that include logical formulae and sub-formulae whose arguments comprise data describing the deployment configuration and behavior. In the preferred embodiment, a logic rule can be thought of as a logical combination of conditions; if each condition is met, the rule itself is true. A logic rule can specify the existence of a specific deployment configuration or behavior of the deployment 10. Thus, logic rules may contain queries for information from the deployment 10 or application model 24 (described below). A logic rule can also specify the existence of “features,” which are described below. The meta-application 20 interprets the truth of a logic rule as an indication of a problem or problematic symptom associated with the deployment 10. Note that “truth” can be considered in relative degrees (i.e., logic rules can be less than 100% true), and the meta-application 20 can be configured to deal with relative degrees of truth. Therefore, while the present disclosure refers in most instances to the “truth” or falsity of rules, it should be understood that, in many cases, it may be appropriate to consider the “relative truth” of such rules. Thus, the meta-application 20 automatically detects problems with the deployment 10 by analyzing the logic rules stored in the local knowledge base 22. As described below, when the meta-application 20 confirms the truth of a logic rule, it can execute one or more remedial actions associated with the logic rule to attempt to cure the detected problem. FIG. 2 illustrates a preferred system 50 and method of managing and updating the content of local knowledge bases 22 of a plurality of different meta-applications 20 that monitor and manage a plurality of applications 10 in different deployment sites. In the illustrated embodiment, each deployment site includes a managed application 10, a meta-application 20, and a local knowledge base 22. In one embodiment, the various managed applications 10 are the same (e.g., all the applications 10 are versions of Microsoft Exchanger™). In another embodiment, the various managed applications 10 can be completely different. Each managed application 10 may comprise a single software application or a set of software applications. The method preferably involves the encoding 52 of knowledge about the managed applications 10. As explained above, the knowledge to be encoded can comprise known problems, remedies, best practices, and other knowledge about the managed applications 10. The encoding can be done manually, automatically, or a combination of both. Further details about preferred encoding methods are described below. The encoded knowledge is stored in a central knowledge repository 54. Skilled artisans will appreciate that the central knowledge repository 54 can contain knowledge about all of the different types of applications 10 that are managed by the group of meta-applications 20. Alternatively, there can be a different central knowledge repository 54 for each different type of managed application 10. In either case, any number of central knowledge repositories 54 can be provided. Preferably, one or more update servers 56 disseminate knowledge updates or patches to various deployment sites of the managed application 10, via the Internet or another suitable communications network. The disseminated updates or patches may comprise, for example, updated knowledge or changes to the local knowledge bases 22, new or updated monitors 14, revised algorithms, and the like. For example, when a new knowledge base article is published and encoded by a human encoder, an update may be sent to all of the deployment sites to add a newly created logic rule and associated remedies to each of the local knowledge bases 22. The update servers 56 can be programmed to send new patches of encoded knowledge to the local knowledge bases 22 according to various different criteria. For example, the update servers 56 can send knowledge updates according to set periods (e.g., once a day, week, month, etc.) or based upon the amount of new and unsent knowledge stored in the central knowledge repository 54. The update servers 56 can also send knowledge updates based upon the importance of the unsent knowledge. For example, logic rules can be rated according to relative importance, so that the most important knowledge rules get sent first. In any case, it will be understood that it is ordinarily preferable to send newly encoded knowledge to the local knowledge bases 22 as soon as possible. In some embodiments, the update server 56 can instruct the meta-applications 20 to remove unneeded knowledge (e.g., older, no longer relevant logic rules) from the knowledge bases 22, by sending software updates containing removal algorithms. Although each deployment site shown in FIG. 2 has a locally installed meta-application 20, it will be recognized (particularly in view of FIG. 1) that the meta-application 20 need not run locally with respect to the managed application 10. In addition, there need not be a one-to-one correspondence between meta-applications 20 and managed applications 10. Thus, for example, a single instance of the meta-application 20 could be operated as a hosted application that monitors multiple deployment sites from a remote location. With reference again to FIG. 1, the application model 24 is preferably a distilled representation of the deployment 10, augmented with additional information. When the meta-application 20 is first installed or configured for management of the deployment 10, the meta-application conducts a “discovery” process to populate the application model 24 with useful information about the deployment 10. The meta-application 20 preferably runs its discovery process periodically or continuously to dynamically keep the application model 24 up to date. In a preferred embodiment, the application model 24 represents all of the objects of the deployment 10 (like software objects, servers, routers, storage subsystems, etc.) and all of the physical and logical dependencies of these objects. For example, in an embodiment in which the meta-application 20 is configured to manage deployments of Microsoft Exchange™, the application model 24 might store the fact that an Exchange™ server S1 has a Storage Group X, which contains a Database Y, which resides on SAN “foo” on Logical Disk D. The application model 24 also preferably contains metadata for each object, such as data related to the “golden” or most preferred configuration for that object, as well as the object's current configuration. The application model 24 also preferably contains information about what telemetry “metrics” are relevant to an object, as well as parameterized troubleshooting procedures (“unit tests”), or references to such procedures (which can reside elsewhere), that can be used to measure the health of an object. The application model 24 can further include information about the relationships between various objects, as well as the normal flow of data and control signals therebetween. Thus, the application model 24 is a “cached” view of the topology of the deployment 10. Without the application model 24, the meta-application 20 would have to always obtain state/configuration information from the deployment 10, which can overburden the network and the resources of the deployment environment. In a preferred embodiment, the application model 24 is kept in a database and only updated when the deployment state or configuration changes. Note that the application model 24 can advantageously be used by algorithms contained within the problem detector 38 to detect rules-based problems and problems found by conducting encoded diagnostic methodologies, as well as by the root cause analysis module 41 to detect root-causes of problematic conditions. In preferred embodiments, most or all of the components of the meta-application 20 use the application model 24 to perform their associated functions. As explained below, the application model 24 can be used by the analysis subsystem 30 and the automation subsystem 32 to dynamically obtain knowledge about the deployment 10, analyze the deployment 10 for the existence of problems, create deployment-specific plans for remedial actions against the deployment, and perform root cause analysis. The application model 24 gives the meta-application 20 the context often required for correct analysis. For example, if the meta-application 20 wants to restart an important application service that has failed, the application model 24 can be used to locate the server of that service and to determine all the dependencies of that service, including whether other important services are resident on that particular server. If there are no other important services on the server, then the meta-application 20 can send a restart message to the service. If the restart message does not work, the meta-application 20 can restart the entire server. However, if there are other important services on that server, it may not be desirable to restart the server and disrupt those services. Without this context provided by the application model 24, the meta-application 20 might mistakenly restart the server and cause additional unwanted problems. In a preferred embodiment, the analysis subsystem 30 is configured to request and receive data from the deployment 10, analyze the received data, detect “features” (described below) in the data, detect problems with the deployment, select high-level remedies to execute against the deployment, and/or perform root cause analysis (RCA). The illustrated analysis subsystem 30 comprises a telemetry component 34, feature detector 36, problem detector 38, remedy selector 40, and root cause analysis (RCA) module 41. The analysis subsystem 30 preferably includes a telemetry component 34 that monitors and collects data values of various state metrics associated with the managed deployment 10. The term “state metric,” as used herein, refers to a characteristic, condition, or state than can be measured or tested to generate a data value. State metrics can be time-variant metrics, such as CPU utilization, available disk space, and service availability. A state metric data value refers to a data value of a particular state metric; for example, CPU utilization=90%, or service available=“unavailable.” The collected data is referred to herein as “telemetry” or “telemetry data.” The term “telemetry,” as used herein, is not intended to imply that data is necessarily collected from a remote source. Rather, the source or sources of the telemetry data may be local to the machine or machines on which the meta-application 20 runs. A “telemetry stream” is a data signal for one state metric. The telemetry component 34 preferably operates with the assistance of the monitors 14 and probes 16, which reside on the servers 12 of the managed application deployment 10, on the same server(s) as the meta-application 20, or on other components. The monitors 14 and probes 16 provide the infrastructure for the telemetry component 34 to request and gather application state metrics (i.e., telemetry) from the deployment 10. As explained below, the monitors 14 and probes 16 also provide the infrastructure for the automation subsystem 32 to execute remedial actions against the deployment 10. The monitors 14 may also be used to distribute execution of analysis tasks that are then communicated back to the analysis subsystem 30. In a preferred embodiment, the monitors 14 and probes 16 comprise software components. However, hardware components or a combination of hardware and software can be provided for cooperating with the telemetry component 34 and automation subsystem 32 for the purposes described herein. The meta-application 20 preferably stores collected telemetry data in the telemetry database 26. The analysis subsystem 30 uses the stored telemetry data to analyze past (often recent) behavior of the deployment 10. In a preferred embodiment, the telemetry database 26 manages its own storage and automatically removes aged data. However, the management of the data within the telemetry database 26 could alternatively be done by other components, such as the telemetry component 34. In a preferred embodiment, since many telemetry analyses operate only on recent telemetry data, the telemetry database 34 includes a caching mechanism to more quickly respond to those data queries. The meta-application 20 preferably also stores features in the telemetry database 26. Like the telemetry data itself, the features are also preferably automatically removed as they age, albeit preferably at a slower rate than the raw telemetry data. The telemetry database 26 can form a subcomponent of the telemetry component 34. After the above-described discovery process and the population of the application model 24, the meta-application 20 runs “best practice plans” that are customized for this deployment 10. Executing these plans serves to verify that there are no known configuration problems, and that the deployment 10 is in a consistent state and is in conformity with best practices (e.g., the deployment 10 has downloaded and is running the latest patches from the maker of the managed application). The feature detector 36 continuously analyzes collected telemetry data to detect “features.” As used herein, a feature is a condition or behavior of the managed application 10 that is known to be associated with a potential problem therewith. A feature can be benign, i.e., not in itself being unusual or anomalous. However, a feature often represents an unusual (but not necessarily problematic) condition or behavior of the deployment 10. A feature might indicate the existence of one or more problems, depending on whether other defined features exist. Examples of features are unusual spikes in CPU utilization, error log entries, loss of network connectivity, failure of a component or subcomponent, storage exhaustion, unusual delays in network transactions, abnormal performance of synthetic transactions, abnormal resource consumption, etc. The existence of a feature preferably causes the problem detector 38 employ algorithms to (1) review the encoded knowledge for problems that are known to possibly cause the detected feature, and (2) possibly initiate more detailed telemetry gathering and direct more extensive troubleshooting of a known problematic component of the deployment 10. One way that the meta-application 20 detects features is to create “baselines” of various state metrics associated with the managed application 10. A baseline is a mathematical model that describes the behavior of a state metric during “normal” operation of the managed application 10, wherein the meta-application 20 determines what is “normal” based on observation of the managed application for a suitable time period. The construction of baselines (also referred to herein as “baselining”) can be ongoing and dynamic, to continually reflect the current operation of the managed application 10. For example, a baseline can be a graph of the normal upper and lower bounds of a state metric as a function of time. If the monitored state metric deviates to a prescribed extent from its baseline, the feature detector 36 registers a new feature in the telemetry database 26. Baselining methods are described in further detail below. The meta-application 20 preferably uses baselines in subsequent calculations for optimization, recovery, and root cause analysis. The feature detector 36 preferably detects features by analyzing telemetry data stored in the telemetry database 26 or telemetry data received directly from the telemetry component 34. The problem detector 38 preferably contains algorithms that request and process telemetry and features and identify deployment problems. These algorithms preferably identify proper deployment 10 configuration, procedures to heal the deployment 10 when it has problems, procedures to optimize the deployment when sub-optimal conditions are recognized, and procedures to protect the deployment when it is compromised. These algorithms may also orchestrate other peer algorithms in the problem detector 38. One algorithm, “Problem Logic,” preferably analyzes the logic rules stored in the knowledge base 22 to detect whether any rules are currently “matched” or “true” (i.e., currently exist within the deployment 10). As explained above, a logic rule can specify the existence of specific deployment configuration parameters and state metric values. Preferably, logic rules can also specify the existence of one or more features. Thus, logic rules map logical combinations of deployment configuration parameters, state metric values, and/or features to known problems associated with the managed application 10. In one embodiment, the problem detector 38 only analyzes logic rules that specify features discovered by the feature detector 36. In other embodiments, the problem detector 38 systematically analyzes some or all of the logic rules in accordance with schedules that are either preprogrammed or set by a system administrator of the managed application 10. The problem detector 38 can also be configured to automatically select logic rules to evaluate based on currently identified features and/or problems, thereby troubleshooting the rules in an optimal way. Also, the feature detector 36 can itself be configured to independently detect problems by dynamically analyzing the deployment 10 based on data gleaned from the application model 24. In this case, the feature detector 36 can employ algorithms that analyze the deployment 10 without resort to the encoded logic rules. In some embodiments, the problem detector 38 is configured to use the RCA module 41 to orchestrate the processing of logic rules, dynamically determining the best set of rules to analyze based on relevance, cost, and benefit. In addition to storing logic rules for mapping deployment states to problems, the knowledge base 22 preferably stores information about remedial actions, or “remedies,” that may be performed to eliminate specific problems. Each remedy is stored in the local knowledge base 22 in association with a particular problem. In some cases, a detected problem has more than one remedy, and the remedy selector 40 determines the preferred order in which to execute the remedies (i.e., if the first remedy fails to correct the problem, then the second is executed; if the second remedy fails, then the third is executed; etc.). Another form of knowledge that the meta-application 20 can use is a “plan,” which is an encoded administrative procedure. Each remedy can have one or more plans that contain instructions on how to fix each type of problem. In this context, a remedy can be thought of as a set of plans and a policy for executing the plans. A plan is a specific order of steps to address a problem in a specific fashion. The plans encode the various actions that the meta-application 20 or the administrator may want to take against the deployment 10, including management actions like “delete a user from the system,” troubleshooting actions like “restart a non-responding software component,” and remedy actions associated with knowledge base articles. The plans are preferably stored in an abstract format that encodes all of the specific actions required and the decision factors that allow the meta-application 20 to customize a plan to a specific deployment 10. In the illustrated embodiment, the plans are stored in the plan database 28. In one embodiment, as problems are detected, they are reported by the meta-application 20 to associated IT personnel, together with associated remedial actions and their plans that may be executed to address the detected problem. Alternatively, the meta-application 20 may be designed or configured to automatically execute remedial actions associated with detected problems. When a given remedial action is executed, the meta-application 20 preferably evaluates whether the associated problem still persists, and logs the result. In the illustrated embodiment, the automation subsystem 32 includes a planning module 42 and an execution engine 44. The planning module 42 preferably accepts high-level remedies and converts associated abstract or generalized plans into deployment-specific low-level actions. The execution engine 44 preferably executes those actions in a consistent and reversible manner against the deployment 10, and it preferably allows such execution of such actions to be paused and resumed in a consistent manner. The automation subsystem 32 can preferably also accept high-level management tasks directly from a human administrator of the deployment 10, convert them into deployment-specific actions, and execute them. In this manner the automation subsystem 32 leverages encoded application knowledge (for example, a plan that encapsulates all the steps required to restore a Microsoft Exchange™ server to a new machine). Remedies and plans are described in further detail below. In a preferred embodiment, the meta-application 20 is also adapted to predict future values of certain data streams associated with the deployment 10. For example, the meta-application 20 can be adapted to predict the exhaustion of fixed resources (e.g., disk space), optimize resource utilization (together with provisioning), and/or optimize performance. As described below, the meta-application 20 may also implement a root cause analysis (RCA) process for resolving less common, or coexisting problems. Accordingly, the analysis subsystem 30 can include a root cause analysis module 41 that implements the RCA process. The RCA process may be used where, for example, no logic rules exist for mapping a particular problem or set of problems to a corresponding cause or remedy. RCA may also be used in a fault-storm, which is a case where many problems are detected within a short period of time. In this case, the RCA module 41 would determine the most important faults to address first. Those skilled in the art will also recognize that the functionality of the meta-application 20 can be integrated with or “built into” the associated managed application 10. Thus, the meta-application 20 and the managed application 10 need not be provided as separate components. Referring again to FIG. 2, each meta-application 20 can be configured to provide feedback 58 that can be used in the knowledge encoding process 52. The feedback 58 provided by a particular deployment site may include, for example, some or all of the following information for each problem detection event: the problem detected, the associated logic rule that triggered, the underlying features and/or telemetry data that caused the rule to trigger, the associated configuration state of the managed application 10 at the time the rule triggered, the remedy or remedies executed in response to the problem detection event, and the outcome of each remedy execution event. This information may be used over time by human personnel and/or automated rules generation and analysis software to adaptively refine the logic rules and remedies stored in the local knowledge bases 22. In an exemplary embodiment, illustrated in FIG. 3, the meta-application 20 is adapted to manage a deployment 10 of Microsoft Exchange™. The deployment 10 is provided on one or more servers 12, as explained above. The meta-application 20 preferably runs on a dedicated server 60, and monitors and manages the Exchange Servers 12 and Active Directory servers 62 over a local area network (LAN) or wide area network (WAN). The meta-application 20 can also monitor other related components, like a DNS server, SMTP, etc. Skilled artisans will appreciate that the number of servers 12 can be relatively large (e.g., ten to twenty servers 12). While a meta-application 20 can be employed to manage a wide variety of different types of applications 10, specific examples of a meta-application are described herein in the context of managing Microsoft Exchange™ However, it should be understood that the concepts described herein are not limited to any specific type of application 10. Consider again the above-mentioned equation describing a system's availability: It will be appreciated that the meta-application 20 advantageously increases the availability A of the deployment 10. The meta-application 20 seeks to reduce MTTR by providing quick insights to the system administrator on the root causes of problems and providing plans to quickly repair the deployment 10. In addition, by continually optimizing the running deployment 10, enforcing best practices, and analyzing the available resources, the meta-application 20 reduces unexpected failures, thereby increasing MTTF. A reduction in MTTR coupled with an increase in MTTF increases the overall availability A of the deployment 10. Application Model Information The application model 24 (FIG. 1) includes detailed knowledge about the application 10 that is managed by the meta-application 20. The application model 24 comprises metadata describing the static and dynamic aspects of the environment being managed. In a preferred embodiment, the application model 24 comprises the information listed below. Skilled artisans will appreciate that the application model 24 can consist of more or less than what is listed below. 1) A list of all objects (physical and logical) that define the domain of the managed application 10, the objects' key attributes (e.g., what is the critical state of the object), and the objects' behavior (e.g., actionable things that the object can do). This includes the application 10, various other subcomponents, infrastructure objects (including networking, storage, and security objects), and the current and historical configuration information of each of these objects. 2) A set of inter- and intra-object dependencies, including the order in which objects (e.g., services) are launched, the order in which various dynamic runtime libraries (or DLL's) are loaded by each of the objects, etc. Also preferably included is the set of valid commands that can be sent to these objects. Any command that is not valid is preferably prevented from being executed. 3) The relationships between the objects and metadata about those relationships, including telemetry “metrics” that can be used to determine the health of the relationship. The meta-application 20 is preferably initially provided with a predefined “abstract” application model that includes all possible allowed configurations and topologies. Once discovery is completed, the meta-application 20 uses this information to validate and instantiate the actual topology and configuration of the deployment 10. Each relationship can have three types of metadata: arity, directionality, and type. The arity describes the number of objects of a specific type at each end of the relationship. Possible arities are 1-to-1, 1-to-n, n-to-1, and n-to-n. The directionality determines which object type is the “from” side of the relation and which object type is the “to” side of the relation. The “type” of the relationship determines the semantic meaning of the relationship. There are at least five types of relationships: dependency, delegation, containment, policy propagation, and event. For example, in a well designed Exchange™ server there is a one-to-n dependency relationship to an Active Directory from an Exchange™ server. With this a priori defined rule, the discovery module is aware that there will be at least one active directory and one or more Exchange™ servers. If this rule is violated, the event is logged for future analysis and reporting as a violation of best practices to the administrator. 4) Constraints on the values for properties of each type of object. These constraints represent “sanity checks” on the values detected during discovery. For example, a server IP address must be four positive integers between 0 and 255 separated by periods. 5) Flow of data and control signals between objects in the application model 24. Data flow is the path taken by the data payload between objects. For example, if the managed application is Exchange™, these two objects might be an Outlook™ client and the Exchange™ server. Control flow describes the “signaling” that controls the flow of data. For example, a request to DNS (Domain Name Service) for name resolution is a control flow. 6) For preferably each object, all telemetry metrics that can be used by various algorithms, including RCA algorithms, to map problems to the object, even when there is a feature detected but no rule is associated with the feature. 7) Troubleshooting procedures associated with an object, which can be used by various algorithms, including RCA algorithms, to determine the current health of a object. The information defined above can be captured in the application model 24, which can be represented as an object graph. Define G and G* as follows: G is the abstract graph that describes the complete environment to be managed by the meta-application 20 (it is preferably provided with the uninstalled version of the meta-application), while G* is computed through discovery and populated with actual information. All key components of the meta-application 20 (e.g., monitoring, analysis, automation) can preferably use the application model 24. FIG. 28 shows an exemplary application model schema, or object graph, for a meta-application 20 that manages a deployment 10 of Microsoft Exchange™. FIG. 28 shows, at a high level, the topology of the deployment 10. The various boxes represent objects of the deployment 10, and the arrows represent links therebetween. The links between the boxes can also be considered as objects of the application model 24. A preferred application model 24 stores various metadata, described above, with these objects, including the links. Unit tests can be stored in connection with the illustrated boxes and links. One of the boxes shown in FIG. 28 is a box 280 representing servers associated with the deployment 10. FIG. 29 shows an object graph for the servers. In other words, FIG. 29 shows all of the instances of servers of the deployment 10, represented as a sub-topology of the application model schema shown in FIG. 28. Similarly, FIGS. 30-40 show sub-topological object graphs for Active Directory, Exchange™ configuration, Windows™ services, IIS services, Exchange™ services, routing, storage groups, public folder hierarchy, databases, third party software, and users associated with the application model represented in FIG. 28. Those of ordinary skill in the art will appreciate that the illustrated application model schema represent an application model for only one particular deployment 10, and that an application model schema will vary depending upon the type of software application that the meta-application 20 manages, as well as on the specific configuration of the particular deployment 10. Skilled artisans will also understand from the teachings herein that FIGS. 28-40 only illustrate a topology and sub-topologies, and that a preferred application model 24 includes much more information (including metadata about objects, links between objects, data flows between objects, dependences, etc.) than what is shown in these figures. When the meta-application 20 is initially installed, it auto-discovers most or all of the components of the deployment 10 using the abstract application model (G). A description of this set of components is then sent to the application model 24, which builds a complete context-sensitive model of the deployment (G). The meta-application 20 uses information from the application model 24 (if the deployment 10 is Exchange™, such information may comprise, e.g., the number of mailboxes, number of servers, network organization of servers, available bandwidth, etc.) to choose a set of monitors 14 to deploy and a set of state metrics to be observed. Then “empirical baselines” for each of these state metrics are chosen. The empirical baselines contain things like the initial set of state metrics important for this deployment, initial values for key system parameters such as CPU utilization, volume of traffic, disk utilization and schedules for maintenance tasks appropriate for this deployment. These empirical baselines are preferably provided with the uninstalled version of the meta-application 20 as part of the abstract application model G. They can be computed by analyses of reference material of the type of software application being managed (e.g., books, websites, knowledge base articles, consultants, etc.) and empirical analyses done on a wide variety of different deployments 10 of the managed application. Once an empirical baseline is chosen, the meta-application 20 can begin analyzing the deployment 10. The meta-application 20 initially runs “best practice plans” as described above. Then the meta-application 20 computes the initial set of telemetry metrics and deploys the minimum number of monitors 14 required to gather them. Finally, the meta-application 20 begins its analysis of the deployment 10 by gathering telemetry from the deployment. Its first task is to create a deployment-specific baseline (discussed below) for each telemetry metric that it is tracking, to augment the empirical baseline initially chosen after the meta-application 20 was installed. In one embodiment, the application model 24 is stored in a standard SQL database. This allows the application model 24 to “answer” queries or questions about the configuration of the managed application 10 for other components of the meta-application 20. Historical configuration information (i.e., a record of the configuration specifics over time) is also preferably stored in the application model 24 to allow administrators to view the entire history of the deployment 10 and how it has changed over time. A querying language interface can be provided to allow the application model 24 to answer queries received by the analysis subsystem 30 (e.g., by the problem detector 38, RCA module 41, remedy selector 40, or other subcomponents thereof) and/or the automation subsystem 32 (e.g., the planning module 42, the execution engine 44, or other subcomponents thereof). The querying language interface preferably also allows these queries to be indexed and cached to improve querying performance. Schema-Neutral Data Storage The application model 24 preferably allows schema-less storage of its information for seamless upgrading of an installation of the meta-application 20. When a software application like the meta-application 20 is upgraded, very often the schema (the way in which its data is organized on disk) will change. In a preferred embodiment, the meta-application 20 can upgrade itself and maintain its historical data about the managed application 10 for extended periods of time without restarting. A schema-neutral data store module is preferably provided, which can accept multiple schemas and query across all of them. This allows data stored in older schemas to still be accessed after a newer version of the meta-application 20 begins using a new schema to store the same type of information. To accomplish this, the meta-application 20 preferably maintains metadata tables for each type of data, which store the locations of the actual data. The metadata tables keep track of the other tables (e.g., SQL tables or HDF5 groups) that hold the actual information. Exemplary metadata tables maintained by the meta-application 20 are illustrated in FIG. 4 and described below. Skilled artisans will appreciate that other types of tables and table content can be provided and maintained, while still providing schema-neutral storage. A discovery table 64 records when discovery (the process responsible for gathering that information stored in the application model 24) was conducted. It is used to track which rows in the data tables were discovered at different times. Thus, the discovery table preferably holds all of the known discovery events. In one embodiment, the discovery table has the following columns: “did”—an integer “discovery ID” column. Each “did” represents a different run of the discovery process. discovery_time—the time the corresponding discovery process started. A schema table 66 records all the different versions of the schema that have been installed by the meta-application 20. In one embodiment, the schema table 66 has the following columns: schema_id—a character sequence of the form “yymmdd_v”, which represents the installation date and sequence number of the schema. For example, if two different versions of a schema were installed on Aug. 13, 2004, the schema table would have two rows with a schema_id of ‘040813—1’ and ‘040813—2’. initialized_by—the login name of the person who installed this schema version. xml_definition—a large object column which contains the entire XML schema. xml_checksum—the checksum of the xml_definition column. This is used by the database code to determine if the schema that a user specifies has already been installed. An entity map table 68 records the names of the actual tables that hold the data for a given entity. For example, for SQL entities, this table contains the names of all the tables that hold data for different schema versions of an entity. Also, for HDF5 entities, the entity map table 68 holds the names of HDF5 files and the names of the groups. In one embodiment, the entity map table 68 has the following columns: schema_id—the schema identifier. entity_name—the name of the entity. table_name—for SQL, the name of the table that holds the data for this version of the entity. history_table_name—for SQL, the table that holds the historic data for this version of the entity. commit_table_name—for SQL, the table that holds the commit information for this version of the entity. hdf_group—for HDF5, the name of the HDF5 file and group that contains the data for this entity. Two records in the entity map for the same entity can have the same table_name and history_table_name values if the underlying definition of the entity is the same in both versions of the schema. An attribute map table 70 records the names of the actual columns that hold the data for different schema versions of a given attribute. In one embodiment, the attribute map table 70 has the following columns: entity_name—the name of the attribute's entity. attribute_name—the name of the attribute. attribute_type—the “type” of the attribute (e.g., a string). column_name—for SQL or HDF5, the name of the attribute's column. sql_column_type—for SQL, the database type of the attribute (e.g. NVARCHAR). hdf_column_type—for HDF5, the HDF type of the attribute (e.g. String). vector_entity_name—only for “Vector” attributes: the name of the entity that holds the actual set of values for the vector. In the illustrated embodiment, two records in the attribute map for the same attribute can have the same column_name values if the underlying definition of the attribute is the same in both versions of the schema. A link map table 72 records the names of the actual tables that hold the links between two specific entities. The link map table 72 contains the names of all the SQL tables or HDF5 files and groups that hold data for different schema versions of a link. In one embodiment, the link map table 72 has the following columns: from_entity—the name of the “from” entity in this relationship. to_entity—the name of the “to” entity in this relationship. link_type—the type of relationship represented by this link. table_name—for SQL, the name of the table that holds the link along with its historic data. commit_table_name—for SQL, the name of the table that holds the commit data for this version of the link. hdf_group—for HDF5, the name of the HDF5 file and group that holds information on the link. Two records in the link map for a given pair of entities can have the same table_name values if the definition of the link is the same in both versions of the schema. Entity data tables preferably hold the actual information for the entities. FIG. 5 shows features of the entity data tables for a single entity, according to one embodiment. In the illustrated embodiment, for a given version of the schema, each entity has associated with it a current entity value table 74, a historic entity value table 76, and an entity commit table 78. The current entity value table 74 holds the most recent information for the entity and preferably has one column per attribute. The historic entity value table 76 holds all historic values (i.e., a record of previous values) as well as all temporary uncommitted updates. Rows are preferably added to the table 76 each time updates occur to the entity table. The entity commit table 78 holds an “update sequence number” and a “commit time” for each update. In a preferred embodiment, it is expected that the following data access patterns will be the most typical: Most queries will perform simple “selects” and “joins” using the current value tables 74. Historic queries will include scans of the historic value table 76. Updates will preferably be achieved via stored procedure calls that insert a record into the commit table 78 followed by several inserts into the historic value table 76, in turn followed by updates into the current value table 74 and ending with an update of the record in the commit table 78. The name of the current entity value table 74 can have any of a wide variety of forms, such as “entity-name_D schema-id” (e.g. “HOST_D040812—1”). As mentioned above, the table 74 preferably records the current information for an entity. In one embodiment, the table 74 has the following columns: oid—the object ID which uniquely identifies the entity in this table. It can optionally be implemented as a simple IDENTITY column that starts with 0 and is incremented by 1 with each new record. usn—the update sequence number, which represents the last committed update that was applied to this record. did—the discovery ID. This is an integer column which can be used to identify different discovery runs. additional columns to hold the most recent attribute values for this entity. The name of the historic entity value table 76 can have any of a wide variety of forms, such as “entity-name_H schema-id” (e.g. “HOST_H040812—1”). As mentioned above, the table 76 records the historic information for an entity and preferably has the following columns: oid—the object ID which identifies the corresponding entity in the current value table 74. attr_name—the name of the attribute that corresponds to the attribute value. usn—the update sequence number corresponding to the attribute value. attr_value—the value of the attribute. applied—a boolean flag used during the update process to indicate whether the update represented by this record has been applied to the corresponding record in the current value table 74. The name of the entity commit table 78 can have any of a wide variety of forms, such as “entity-name_C schema-id” (e.g. “HOST_C040812—1”). As mentioned above, the table 78 records the commit status of the updates to the entities and preferably has the following columns: usn—the update sequence number representing the specific update action. commit_time—the time at which the update was committed. FIG. 6 shows two tables that preferably hold the actual information about related entities. In one embodiment, for a given version of the schema, each link has associated with it a link table 80 and a link commit table 82. The link table 80 preferably holds recent and historic information for the links, as well as details of a specified type of relationship between two entities. The link commit table 82 preferably holds an update sequence number and a commit time for each update to its corresponding link table 80. The name of the link table 80 can have any of a wide variety of forms, such as “entity1-name_entity2-name_type_L schema-id” (e.g. “DOMAIN_HOST_PC_L040812—1”). As mentioned above, the link table 80 preferably records the current and historic information for all links between two entities. In one embodiment, the link table 80 has the following columns: from_oid—the object ID which identifies the “from” entity to_oid—the object ID which identifies the “to” entity did—the “discovery ID” of the discovery run which identified this link. insert_usn—the update sequence number of the update that added this link. delete_usn—the update sequence number of the update that deleted this link. The name of the link commit table 82 can have any of a wide variety of forms, such as “entity1-name_entity2-name_type_C schema-id” (e.g. “DOMAIN_HOST_PC_C040812—1”). As mentioned above, the link commit table 82 records the commit status of the updates to the links. In one embodiment, the table 82 has the following columns: Thus, skilled artisans will understand from the teachings herein, and particularly FIGS. 4-6, how to maintain multiple versions of the application model 24 across numerous updates and upgrades of the meta-application 20, without difficult or problematic data migrations. For further guidance, U.S. Provisional Patent Application No. 60/638,006 discloses, in Appendix C, an example application model schema used within a meta-application 20 for managing Microsoft Exchange™. In a preferred embodiment, the meta-application 20 includes functionality for performing efficient querying of static queries. The meta-application 20 preferably knows beforehand the forms of all possible data queries that the data store is able to perform, but not always the specific data to be queried. Specifically, the meta-application 20 preferably knows what tables will be queried and which columns will be used for query constraints and joins. In this embodiment, the meta-application 20 may sometimes know exactly what values will constrain a query, but generally it will not. Since the data in the data store can change, it may not be useful to cache the results of a known query. However, it is useful to cache the data structures used to perform the query, which allows for quicker responses to queries. Thus, the meta-application 20 preferably includes a persistence system that caches and maintains a known set of queries that the meta-application 20 might execute as well as usage frequency information for each query. In a preferred implementation, queries that are completely bound are stored in a first cache (closest to returning the result). These bound queries already know exactly what table (e.g., SQL table) and constraints to use. A second cache contains queries that are not completely bound, such as a query that might lookup a server with a name to be provided when the query is executed. These unbound queries can be though of as prepared statements. The persistence system of the meta-application 20 preferably also maintains a cache of frequently accessed data in memory, organized for fast lookup and good locality of reference, for the queries that are most frequently executed. So if a specific query looks in table foo for column bar with a specific value, rows in table foo will be split into two cached tables, one for column bar and one for the other columns. Gathering Telemetry Monitors and Probes As explained above, with reference again to FIG. 1, the meta-application 20 uses monitors 14 and probes 16 to collect telemetry data (also referred to herein as “state metrics” or “telemetry metrics”) from the deployment 10 of the managed application. In the illustrated embodiment, a monitor 14 encapsulates all the different ways that the meta-application 20 can gather telemetry data from, and control, the deployment 10. Each probe 16 preferably runs inside of a monitor 14 and is responsible for gathering data for a specific telemetry metric. The analysis subsystem 30 is preferably concerned with gathered telemetry metrics, and leaves the details of how to gather them to the monitors 14. The automation subsystem 32 preferably just worries about “operators” and lets the monitors 14 deal with how to execute them on the deployment 10. In a preferred embodiment, a monitor 14 is a piece of code, such as executable program or DLL (dynamic link library) file. The application model 24 can maintain a mapping of all possible telemetry metrics associated with each application model component/object. This allows algorithms to dynamically create problem identification procedures at runtime without the need for pre-built rules. Monitors 14 can preferably use both local and remote APIs (application program interfaces) to access the managed application 10. This simplifies installation of the meta-application 20, because it is not necessary to modify any deployment 10 components in order for the meta-application to monitor them. In addition, certain components, like routers and firewalls, can typically only be managed via remote APIs. Microsoft Windows™ has the ability to monitor and remotely control most deployment 10 components via remote APIs. Thus, remote monitors 14 can provide a significant amount of the functionality required to manage the deployment 10. Monitors 14 can reside locally with respect to the deployment 10, or locally with respect to the meta-application 20. In a preferred embodiment, one monitor 14 is provided on each server 12 of the deployment 10. In this case, the monitor 14 can preferably use all the remote and/or local APIs (some application-specific APIs are only accessible locally on the server 12 on which the application is installed). In addition, local monitors 14 can minimize the bandwidth they use by sending only “diffs” of telemetry data (differences between two data sets). Local monitors 14 can preferably also operate when network connectivity to the meta-application 20 server (the meta-application 20 is preferably provided on one server, but could be provided on a plurality of servers) is lost. In such a case, a local monitor 14 can preferably batch collected data and send it when connectivity is regained. Local monitors 14 preferably also have the ability for local analysis of telemetry, as well as identification of features or problems and associated resolutions, thus providing a distributed analysis capability to the meta-application 20. For example, if the monitor 14 senses that the deployment 10 is about to crash, the monitor can gracefully and immediately shut down services to minimize data loss. The meta-application 20 preferably analyzes and chooses (e.g., when it is first installed) the set of telemetry required to manage, the application deployment 10. Monitors 14 can be categorized by the application component they monitor and control. For example, there may be an Exchange™ Server monitor, a Microsoft DNS Server monitor, a Cisco PIX Firewall™ monitor, etc. The meta-application's knowledge base 22 preferably has a mapping of telemetry metrics to monitors 14. Monitors 14 can register themselves with the telemetry component 34 (discussed below), which then configures each monitor 14 with respect to the type and frequency of telemetry required. FIG. 7 shows a meta-application 20 that manages two different application platforms 84 and 86. The meta-application 20 comprises a controller 88 and an administrative user interface 29 (illustrated as a graphical user interface or GUI). The controller 88 may be implemented on one or more different servers and includes the analysis subsystem 30 and automation subsystem 32 discussed above. Also shown are monitors 92 and 94. As shown, the monitors can reside either locally with respect to the managed application (such as the monitor 92) or within the controller 88 (such as the monitor 94). The monitor 92 resides locally within the application platform 84, and sends telemetry to the analysis subsystem 30, possibly using SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol). The automation subsystem 32 can send deployment healing commands to the monitor 92 for healing the application platform 84. The monitor 94 resides within the controller 88, and gathers telemetry from application platform 86 via any of a variety of protocols, such as SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol), RPC (Remote Procedure Call), and the like. The automation subsystem 32 can send healing commands to the monitor 94, which remotely executes them against the application platform 86. Referring again to FIG. 1, in a preferred embodiment, each monitor 14 is implemented as a “container” process with the ability to load new probes 16 at runtime (on Windows™ platforms, monitors 14 can preferably load new probes 16 as DLL files during runtime using the LoadLibrary™ mechanism). In this context, the probes 16 can be thought of as new telemetry capabilities. Monitors 14 send telemetry to the meta-application 20 in chunks of data called “telemetry packets.” The telemetry component 34 can preferably configure the container process to control the frequency with which it sends telemetry packets and the type of telemetry metrics in each packet. The container process is preferably also configurable with respect to the protocol it uses to send the telemetry packets. Each packet can be tagged with a “priority” that the meta-application 20 can use to determine the packet's importance. The monitor 14 can use platform APIs to gather all requested metrics, form a packet, and then send the packet using the negotiated protocol. FIG. 8 illustrates preferred methodology or process flow of the analysis subsystem 30, as it pertains to Problem Logic (discussed below). As shown, the telemetry sent by the monitors 14 is received by the telemetry component 34, which processes the telemetry (discussed below). The meta-application 20 can be configured to send urgent telemetry (e.g., telemetry that clearly or probably comprises evidence of a problem with the deployment 10) directly to the problem detector 38, while the rest of the telemetry is stored in the telemetry database 26. The feature detector 36 analyzes the received telemetry to detect features, which are passed on to the problem detector 38. The feature detector 36 may use feature detection algorithms 25 (discussed below) to detect the features. The problem detector 38 uses the knowledge from the knowledge base 22 to detect problems associated with the detected features. The remedy selector 40 then analyzes the detected problems to identify appropriate remedies and develop a healing strategy. Information associated with the detected problems and remedies are then sent to the automation subsystem 32. The telemetry component 34, feature detector 36, problem detector 38, and remedy selector 40 can advantageously use information received from the application model 24 to perform their associated tasks. Thus, the analysis subsystem 30 is where the meta-application 20 does its telemetry analysis and problem identification. The illustrated meta-application 20 uses a staged approach to telemetry analysis with analyses getting increasingly complex as the data proceeds to the next stage. The analysis subsystem 30 is preferably heavily multithreaded to maximize responsiveness. Also, because much of the analyses are not synchronized and their execution run at different rates, the architecture preferably allows related tasks to have disparate execution times while still being able to cooperate with each other. Each thread pool preferably has synchronization data structures that reduce the complexity of global thread management. Telemetry gathering may require quasi-realtime processing constraints, so that the meta-application 20 can avoid dropping telemetry or overflowing network buffers. To enforce this, all telemetry-processing tasks are preferably given a priority and are executed in priority order. If tasks need to be dropped, then preferably only the lowest priority tasks are eliminated. To facilitate timely response to incoming telemetry, the entire telemetry-processing loop is advantageously multithreaded. The most time-sensitive task is performed by the telemetry component 34, which preferably monitors all of the incoming telemetry and prevents overflow of network buffers. A telemetry priority queue (TPQ) can be provided to decouple the telemetry component 34 from the rest of the analysis subsystem 30, so that the component 34 can feed telemetry packets to the TPQ without regard for how quickly the processor thread is taking telemetry tasks off of the TPQ. The thread pool of the telemetry component 34 preferably accepts telemetry from monitors 14 and then labels each packet with a priority. The telemetry packet is then inserted into the TPQ that is sorted by telemetry priority. In addition to the TPQ, a scheduled priority queue (SPQ) can maintain “scheduled” tasks sorted by task priority. The SPQ priorities are preferably in the same “units” as the TPQ priorities to facilitate comparison against each other. The meta-application 20 preferably inserts tasks into the SPQ when it needs to execute an internal task, such as responding to updates from the update server 56 (FIG. 2) or regular configuration synchronization with the application model 24. The priority of a scheduled task is zero when it is not time for execution, and increases over time after it passes its scheduled time of execution. Tasks also may change in priority as other algorithms measure and record their utility. The highest task in both queues is compared and the higher priority task is chosen. The chosen task is then assigned to a thread from the thread pool of the telemetry component 34. Packets are first split into their constituent parts. Each telemetry part is then processed according to its type. Each telemetry type has a predetermined sequence of tasks that are invoked from the processor thread. These tasks include things like insertion into the telemetry database 26 and feature detection. Meters, Redundancy Avoidance, and Postprocessors In embodiments of the invention, the managed application 10 is provided in a distributed environment, and the meta-application 20 may reside on one or more servers that are physically remote from the managed application. In this arrangement, the points of measurement specification of telemetry (e.g., the one or more servers on which the meta-application 20 resides) and actual collection (e.g., the servers 12 containing components of the managed application 10) are different. In a preferred embodiment, the meta-application 20 specifies “what” is to be measured by gathering up all relevant information required to effect the measurement, conglomerating it into some structure or record (referred to herein as a “meter”), and transmitting that information to a point of data collection. The infrastructure at the data collection point (in the illustrated embodiment, one or more monitors 14) uses the meter's contents to effect the measurement, and then packages that information into one or more discrete packets (i.e., state metrics) for shipment back to a point of processing, storage, and/or aggregation, typically near the place where the meter was originally created. In one embodiment, the telemetry component 34 is the point of meter creation and processing. The task of gathering up all relevant information to effect measurement can be burdensome, especially in systems where many different code points in numerous contexts might want to gather data. In preferred embodiments of the present invention, this task is simplified by providing an application model 24, which is a well-structured database representing a distilled view of the environment where things are measured. The application model 24 advantageously provides a means of extracting metadata relevant for telemetry measurement. In other words, the application model 24 helps to reduce the amount of “work” that the meta-application 20 needs to do in order to gather information about the deployment 10. In these embodiments, it is more convenient to place the burden of gathering information on the meter itself. In a preferred embodiment, the general method of data collection is as follows. The measurement “client” (e.g., the monitor 14) specifies an entity or set of entities on which the measurement should be performed, the type of measurement that should be performed on the given entities, and any parameters (not determinable by context) required for the measurement. The measurement “server,” specifically the meter or piece of infrastructure that creates the meter (e.g., the meta-application controller 88 of FIG. 7), then ensures that the set of specified entities makes sense for the kind of measurement requested, extracts all information relevant for measurement from the application model 24, and packages that information, along with parameters (raw or processed), into itself. The code that acts as a measurement client (e.g., the monitor 14) becomes much simpler as a result, and the metering system becomes much more flexible, maintainable, and extensible. In some systems, it is possible and likely that many disparate elements of the system's components within the same process will request identical (or nearly identical) sets of telemetry data in the meter-based approach described above (typically as the result of brute-force application of rule-based demands for data). Disparate elements of a system's components in different processes on the same or on different originating computers may also ask for the same meter-based data. It is difficult to coordinate on the distributed demand-side (i.e., at the monitors 14) to ensure that only one instance of the meter is running at any given time. Those elements demanding metrics from their identical meters may start and stop their measurements at any time, with no coordination between them. The network costs of transmitting the duplicate copies of a given meter to the point of data collection (e.g., monitor 14) is low compared to the overall cost of transmitting the resulting metrics back to the point of meter creation. It is therefore not too costly to allow these redundant copies of meters to run to the data collection point. It is very costly, however, to effect separate measurement of the same data source for each copy of the meter, to arrive at what is essentially the same set of metrics. Therefore, the monitors 14 are preferably configured to prevent redundant measurement of data in distributed systems. Each monitor 14 preferably recognizes redundancies in the different metering requests arriving at a data collection point, and effects only a single stream of measurements to derive all the metric values to be sent back to those elements in the analysis subsystem 30 requesting the measurements. The metric set can be sent back to each originating host/process separately and “demultiplexed” there to advise each separate requester (typically the meter creators) of the metrics' values. There are efficient ways to determine whether multiple meters arriving at the data collection points represent the same essential request. These methods are much more efficient than brute-force comparison of all meter internal data. For purposes of comparison, there are some elements of the packaged meter that might be deemed immaterial for comparison (e.g., frequency of measurement under certain restricted conditions). In a preferred embodiment, filters or aggregators (collectively referred to herein as “postprocessors”) are applied to collected telemetry data to lessen the network burden of sending collection metrics from the data collection point (e.g., monitors 14) to the data consumer (e.g., analysis subsystem 30). A set of postprocessors could be constructed as components separate from the meters, with each postprocessor being widely applicable to a number of different kinds of meters. Effective postprocessing then is a matter of creating the appropriate meter, and then attaching the appropriate postprocessor to the meter. As the meter generates metric values (state metrics), those metrics make their way to the postprocessor, which then applies appropriate filtering, aggregation, and/or transformation to those input metrics to generate a separate stream of output metrics. The number, nature, and content of the output metrics need not correspond tightly to the input metrics. The postprocessor usually changes the nature of the output data, sometimes drastically. The meter/postprocessor coupling sends back to the data consumer only the output metrics from the postprocessor. A variety of different types of postprocessors are possible. For example, one type of postprocessor is an IDENTITY postprocessor, which does not change the meter output in any way. In this case, the coupling of the meter and postprocessor generates results identical to what would have been generated by the meter alone. Another type of postprocessor is one that filters data according to some static or dynamic criteria, allowing input metrics through as output metrics without modification if they match the filtering criteria, and completely eliminating the input metrics otherwise. Yet another type of postprocessor is one that applies some formulaic transformation. For example, such a postprocessor can double the value of each metric, or apply a “lookup” table function to metric values. Skilled artisans will appreciate that other types of postprocessors may be desirable and useful. A postprocessor can also be a composite of several other types of postprocessors. Postprocessors may also be useful in ways other than limiting network traffic. For example, in some embodiments, postprocessors make the data consumers in the analysis subsystem 30 much easier to construct because some of the data processing burden occurs at the point of data collection (e.g., the monitors 14), thus simplifying the content of the telemetry stream. Just as the measurement infrastructure (in the illustrated embodiment, the monitors 14) can avoid duplicating measurements and generation of redundant metrics at the point of data collection, similar concepts can be applied to postprocessing. For two different meter/postprocessor couplings with the same meter but different postprocessors, the same raw measurement (the data-source-facing action) can be applied, but different postprocessors can be applied to the metrics stream to generate two separate sets of metrics, as desired by the metrics consumers (in the illustrated embodiment, elements of the analysis subsystem 30). Two different data consumers can, of course, specify the same (to a sufficient degree) meter/postprocessing coupling, in which case the whole pipeline at the point of data measurement is shared for both (for the data-sink-facing action). There are several main concepts relevant to a preferred total avoidance of redundant measurement. A meter preferably has a “source-facing hash” that combines elements relevant to the meta-application controller 88 (e.g., machine name, telemetry name, etc.). The source-facing hash is derived from the meter's “significant and source-relevant attributes.” Similarly, a meter/postprocessor coupling preferably has a “sink-facing hash” that combines elements relevant to the monitoring APIs of a server 12 of the deployment 10 (e.g., which APIs are being used, which components are being monitored, how many hooks are in this server, etc.). The sink-facing hash is derived from the coupling's “significant and sink-relevant attributes,” the sink-relevant attributes being a superset of the source-relevant attributes. It is also possible that information present on the meter and/or the postprocessor can be “advisory” or “suggested” and not count as relevant attributes for purposes of this discrimination. The system uses the source-facing hashes and sink-facing hashes to eliminate redundant meter gathering and redundant post processing, respectively. Redundancy can also be avoided in transmitting all metrics streams back to data consumers in the analysis subsystem 30. Preferably, the monitor 14 transmits only one copy of the data back to the single process (and/or host) that may host multiple data consumers for identical meter/postprocessor couplings. The data-consuming side can worry about notifying all consumers of newly arrived metrics data (demultiplexing). There is often more than one way to collect any given piece of data, so a given meter's set of metrics could be collected from one of several different sources in a distributed environment of a deployment 10. The meta-application 20 is preferably configured to leverage existing data collection infrastructure of the deployment 10, if any exists. In one embodiment, the monitors 14 are configured to collect metrics through different native APIs on a given platform (e.g., Win32, Linux kernel interface, etc.). Metrics can also be collected through a low-level measurement service provider (e.g., WMI on Windows™), or through other products that collect and aggregate such information. The meta-application 20 can also be configured to employ different methods for measuring the same data according to various criteria. For example, the meta-application 20 can measure telemetry data based on global system-determined or user-specified preferences for different measurement methods. Alternatively, measurement preferences can be specified on a per-meter basis. For example, a CPU measurement might take fewer resources on a server 12 of the deployment 10 than page faults per second. As another example of per-meter measurement preferences, it might not make sense to measure disk usage more than once a minute. The meta-application 20 can also collect telemetry data based on the current availability of measurement resources. Also, some data collection API's may not be reliable, in which case the monitor 14 should retry using another API. Skilled artisans will understand that other data measurement preferences can be provided at the same or other granularities. Specific policies for how to measure and cache specific telemetry metrics can be stored in these preferences. In such a system, one would usually prioritize measurement methods for each meter based on preferences. Some measurement methods could be absolutely prohibited, perhaps based on dynamic criteria. The meta-application 20 can be configured to keep track of which allowable measurement methods are currently available, as well as those that do not work. Also, the meta-application 20 can be configured to dynamically “arbitrate” the measurement of a given meter between different measurement points and measurement methods, based on current availability and preference. In one embodiment, the meta-application 20 always attempts to measure the meter by selecting a currently available method having the highest priority, and switching the method based on varying availability, preference, and prohibitions. Feature Detection Overview With reference to FIGS. 1 and 8, this section describes algorithms 25 and structures used by the analysis subsystem 30 to identify features from raw telemetry data, create “baselines” for gathered telemetry signals, and create normalcy bands for the telemetry signals. In the illustrated embodiment, these activities are performed by the feature detector 36. The following describes preferred embodiments of the feature detection algorithms, structures, and methodology of the meta-application 20. Skilled artisans will appreciate that many variations of these are possible. The meta-application 20 preferably includes telemetry analysis algorithms 25 (FIG. 8) that identify suspicious or anomalous trends or states from raw telemetry. Streams of telemetry are analyzed differently depending upon the type of telemetry. Numeric telemetry is analyzed using statistical techniques, and when a telemetry value of a particular stream does not match a statistical profile for the stream, a feature is generated. Other types of telemetry are analyzed using pattern-matching techniques. All feature-detection algorithms finish by adding detected features to a “feature list,” which allows different algorithms to synchronize themselves. The feature list is preferably stored in the telemetry database 26. Each feature preferably has an associated lifetime that the meta-application 20 uses to determine when it is appropriate to remove the feature from the feature list. Removal allows the meta-application 20 to prevent false positives and to clean out features that have not affected application performance or stability. Note that if a feature did have such an effect, it would have triggered a problem (described below), and the meta-application 20 would have changed the feature's lifetime value. Further, if the meta-application 20 resolves the detected problem, then the feature itself should disappear. Modeling Deployment Behavior Specific analysis algorithms and heuristics used by the meta-application 20 to model the behavior of the deployment 10 and to convert raw telemetry into “predicates” that are used to detect and represent specific conditions, such as “slow CPU” or “almost full disk,” will now be described. The meta-application 20 utilizes telemetry streams from a managed application 10 to determine the health of said application, possibly using metadata about appropriate telemetry for each application component from application model 24. The algorithms 25 are preferably configured to detect whether a specific stream of telemetry shows the existence of specific anomalous states in the deployment 10 or a component thereof; such as an unusually slow CPU, a hard disk that is almost full, message queues that are growing at a high rate, or email delivery that is slow. The feature detector 36 preferably uses the algorithms to mathematically analyze the raw numerical telemetry to determine if certain anomalous conditions are met. This section describes some of the techniques used to analyze non-cyclical and non-linear telemetry signals. A preferred method uses a “classification algorithm,” a “modeling algorithm,” and “control charts.” The classification algorithm recognizes telemetry signals or streams as belonging to one of a plurality of signal categories, each category describing the general type of signal. For example, in one embodiment the classification algorithm uses signal categories entitled “constant,” “flat,” “integral,” “polynomial,” “noise,” “poles,” or “times” (or alternative titles) defined as described below. A different set of predefined signal categories may alternatively be used. The modeling algorithm, which can be recursive with respect to itself and the classification algorithm, computes numerical parameters of a mathematical model of a telemetry signal (e.g. mean and standard deviation of a normal distribution modeling white noise.) The mathematical models are used for “baselining” and feature detection. The classification algorithm dynamically analyzes a stream of numerical data to mathematically determine the signal category to which it belongs. The signal categories describe fundamentally different types of signals. A constant stream contains the same numerical value repeated forever (e.g., 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, . . . ). A pole stream tends to have two classes of values. The majority of the pole signal values are in one numerical range (e.g., zero), and a minority of the pole signal values are in another numerical range. FIG. 9 shows an example of a poles signal. A flat stream tends to contain runs of the same numerical value (e.g., 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 7, 7, 7, 7, 7, 7, . . . ). FIG. 10 shows an example of a flat signal. An integral stream either constantly increases or decreases in value. FIG. 11 shows an example of an integral signal. A polynomial stream can be modeled by one specific polynomial function (e.g., x2+2x+2=0). A noise stream contains random values that are not easily described by a mathematical equation (e.g., the differences between the nth and n+1th values tend to be large and the derivatives are also noisy). A times stream is the product of two other streams, as in the expression Stream1(1+Stream2). The meta-application 20 preferably identifies each of these signal categories by its specific mathematical properties. Accordingly, the meta-application 20 conducts a test for each category, where each test may be generated as a result of processing knowledge stored in the knowledge base 22 or generated dynamically by a higher-level feature detector. As each telemetry feed is monitored, it is classified into one of these categories by conducting each category's test. The integral, poles, and times categories are compound or recursive, meaning that they build upon another category, such as polynomial. So a feed might be categorized as a “times” feed combining polynomial and noise streams. The modeling algorithm then uses these signal category classifications to generate a description of each feed. Each mathematical category has its own specific set of statistical measures to describe the values in the feed. The constant category only has the value of the numbers in the feed. The flat category models both the various values of the feed and the size of the changes in the feed when they occur. So the flat category model is recursive and is composed of a model representing the various y values of the feed and another model representing the size of the non-zero changes in y. The integral category model records whether the feed is increasing or decreasing and the recursive model representing the first derivative of the stream. The polynomial model records the equation that describes the telemetry stream. The noise model is represented by either a Gaussian or Gamma distribution. The poles model contains a recursive model representing the height of the “spikes” or “poles” of this telemetry feed. The times model records the two recursive models used to represent this telemetry feed. These values are computed and can be used to detect abnormal conditions that are registered in the telemetry database 26 as features. These mathematical models can be updated periodically (either manually or by the meta-application 20) or dynamically (by the meta-application), based upon new telemetry streams and/or modifications of the formulae for computing numerical parameters of the mathematical models. Such modifications may be based upon, for example, knowledge learned by analyzing the historical use of the deployed software application 10, feedback received from persons that use or control the deployed software application 10, and/or new publicly available knowledge of the software application 10. For each component of the model (poles, flats, etc.), a type of “control chart” (described below) can be created to profile that portion of the telemetry signal. The classification or assignment of a telemetry signal to a signal category can be accomplished dynamically by the meta-application 20 based upon an analysis of a received telemetry signal. Alternatively, the classification or assignment of a telemetry signal to a signal category can be done prior to monitoring the telemetry signal, based upon knowledge of the particular metric being monitored. For example, it may be known beforehand that, in a given deployment of the software application being managed, a particular metric is always constant (the “constant” signal category) or always oscillating for short periods between different values (“flats”). In such cases, the meta-application 20 can be configured to assign this telemetry signal to the known signal category without executing the classification algorithm for this particular metric. The analysis subsystem 30 is preferably configured to generate numerical charts for analyzing real-time telemetry streams, for the purpose of detecting features that can be entered into the meta-application's Problem Logic circuitry (described below). In a preferred embodiment, there are three types of numerical charts: control charts, trend charts, and seasonality charts. FIG. 12A shows an example of a control chart 95 for a given telemetry metric. The control chart 95 shows a telemetry signal 94. A normalcy range of the telemetry signal 94 is characterized by an upper threshold 91 and a lower threshold 93. The upper threshold 91 is characterized by an upper zero-confidence level T0 (feature confidence equals 0), an upper trigger-confidence level Tc (feature confidence equals c), and an upper full-confidence level T1 (feature confidence equals 1), which are described below. Similarly, the lower threshold 93 is characterized by a lower zero-confidence level T0 (feature confidence equals 0), a lower trigger-confidence level Tc (feature confidence equals c), and a lower full-confidence level T1 (feature confidence equals 1). Skilled artisans will appreciate from the teachings herein that control charts can have several different forms, depending upon the telemetry signal. In the illustrated chart 95, the telemetry signal 94 reaches points 106, which can be considered as anomalous behavior of the measured metric and can be registered as features in the telemetry database 26. When the real-time telemetry signal 94 crosses above the upper threshold 91 or below the lower threshold 93 (and more preferably the trigger-confidence levels Tc thereof), the feature detector 36 preferably generates a corresponding feature. Fine-grained control can be provided by specifying a preprocessing smoothing average window, a required “sustain time” for a deviation, and a trigger confidence level. Thresholds of numerical charts can measure a telemetry signal absolutely or statistically. To further illustrate the theory and approach behind numerical charts, consider FIG. 12B, which shows a graph 180 that represents an upper threshold of a normalcy range of a control chart. In this graph 180, the y-axis is the value of a specific telemetry metric, and the x-axis is time. The graph shows a telemetry stream 182 of a state metric, with confidence levels T0 (confidence equals 0), Tc (confidence equals c), and T1 (confidence equals 0) superimposed thereon. The confidence levels T0, Tc, and T1, which respectively indicate feature confidence values of 0, c, and 1, can be computed based on mathematical models, described above. These confidence values are feature predicate confidence values (see Confidence subsection of Detection of Problem States section below). A plurality of points 190 on the telemetry stream 182 represent detected features associated with the particular state metric being monitored. Thus, in a numerical chart, a monitored metric's normalcy range preferably has a low threshold and a high threshold (either threshold is optional). A threshold is an interval [T1,T0] or [T0,T1]. The feature detector 36 (FIG. 1) preferably initiates feature generation at the “trigger” confidence level Tc, and preferably continues generating features until the confidence returns to 0. Feature confidence can ramp up linearly within [T0,T1] (i.e., confidence is 0 at T0, c at Tc, and 1 at T1). The problem detector 38 can preferably accept a profusion of features generated with different confidence values. Since the trigger confidence is c, the first feature generated by a numerical chart will have a confidence greater than or equal to c. In the control chart 95 of FIG. 12A, the signal 94 crosses above the upper trigger-confidence level Tc and subsequently remains above the upper zero-confidence level T0 for the chart's sustain period, resulting in the generation of a feature 97. The signal 94 then crosses below the lower trigger-confidence level Tc and subsequently remains below the lower zero-confidence level T0 for the sustain period, resulting in the generation of a feature 99. The confidence of a feature reported from a chart is preferably the feature predicate confidence that is eventually seen by Problem Logic (discussed below). Numerical charts and Problem logic preferably share the same definition of “confidence.” FIG. 12C shows a “confidence curve” 192 mapped to the telemetry value. The confidence curve 192 is a piecewise linear function clamped to interval [0,1]. Superimposed on the confidence curve 192 are vertical dotted lines 194, 196, 198, 200, 202, and 204. The dotted lines 200, 202, and 204 respectively represent a zero-confidence level, a trigger-confidence level, and a full-confidence level associated with an upper threshold of the telemetry signal. In one embodiment, the feature detector 36 generates new features with corresponding confidence values according to the following methodology, it being understood that other methods are also possible. When the monitored state metric has a value between the lines 198 and 200, the confidence value is zero, and therefore the feature detector 36 preferably does not generate any new features. When the monitored metric increases above the line 200 but is below the line 202, the confidence of a feature is between 0 and c, and the feature detector 36 can be configured to (but preferably does not) generate new features with such confidence values. When the monitored metric increases above the line 202, the confidence of a new feature is now c, and the feature detector 36 preferably begins generating new features with appropriate confidence values until the telemetry signal decreases below an arbitrary value, such as the line 200 that represents zero confidence. A similar methodology can apply with respect to the dotted lines 194, 196, and 198. In a preferred embodiment, the variables used by numerical charts are the following: Tau (τ) is a parameter that determines the weights that are applied in the calculation of mu (μ) and sigma (a). Use τ=∞ to compute ordinary mean and sigma, and use 0<τ<∞ to emphasize recent history as done in an EWMA chart which uses an exponentially weighted moving average. Mu (μ) is the mean of the data added to the chart. Sigma (σ) is the standard deviation of the data added to the chart. “Forget Samples” (NF) is the maximum number of samples retained in the memory of the chart. When this limit is reached, adding a new point will push out the oldest point. “Forget Time” (TF) is the maximum time that a sample is retained in the memory of the chart. When the time coordinate x of a point is too old compared to the time coordinate x of the most recent point, then the old point is purged. “Low” refers to a chart's low threshold, which is specified by a triple [true,L1,L0] or [false,Lc,c]. In the first form, L1 is the confidence=1 level, L0 is the confidence=0 level, and confidence ramps down linearly on threshold [L1,L0]. The width of the threshold is ΔL=L0−L1. In the second form, Lc is a calibration level with confidence=c. The width of the interval, ΔL=3 σ, is determined from signal history. Limits L0 and L1 can be calculated from Lc, and ΔL, wherein L0=Lc+c ΔL, and L1=Lc−(1−c) ΔL. The threshold is [L1,L0]. “High” refers to a chart's high threshold, which is specified by a triple [true,H1,H0] or [false,Hc,c]. In the first form, H1 is the confidence=1 level, H0 is the confidence=0 level, and confidence ramps up linearly on threshold [H0,H1]. The width of the threshold is ΔH=H1−H0. In the second form, Hc is a calibration level with confidence=c. The width of the interval, ΔH=3 σ, is determined from signal history. Limits H0 and H1 can be calculated from Hc, c, and ΔH, wherein H0=Hc−c ΔH, and H1=Hc+(1−c) ΔH. The threshold is [H0,H1]. “Trigger Confidence” (t) is the confidence level at which feature generation is initiated. The high trigger level Ht is calculated as Ht=H0+t ΔH=(1−t) H0+tH1=Hc+(t−c) ΔH. The low trigger level Lt is calculated as Lt=L0−t ΔL=(1−t) L0+t L1=Lc−(t−c) ΔL. “Average Samples” (NA) is the maximum number of points that will be considered in smoothing average preprocessing of the input signal. “Average Time” (TA) is the maximum time that will be considered in smoothing average preprocessing of the input signal. “Sustain Samples” (NS) is the minimum number of points required to sustain a positive confidence deviation before a feature is generated. “Sustain Time” (TS) is the minimum time required to sustain a positive confidence deviation before a feature is generated. In a given control chart, points (xi, yi) are progressively added to the chart by an incoming signal. The x-coordinate is time and the y-coordinate is some measured telemetry metric. Preferably, a limited number NF of points are remembered, and points are remembered only for a limited duration of time TF, where passage of time is indicated by the most recent point added to the chart. The mean (μ) and standard deviation (σ) of the data are preferably determined by exponentially weighted moving averages (EWMA): μ = ∑ ( x i , y i ) ∈ C ⁢ ⅇ - x i / τ ⁢ y i ∑ ( x i , y i ) ∈ C ⁢ ⅇ - x i / τ σ 2 = ∑ ( x i , y i ) ∈ C ⁢ ⅇ - x i / τ ⁡ ( y i - μ ) 2 ∑ ( x i , y i ) ∈ C ⁢ ⅇ - x i / τ The tau (τ) parameter determines the weights applied in the calculation of mu (μ) and sigma (σ). In order to weight them evenly, it is preferred to use τ=∞. In order to emphasize recent telemetry history, it is preferred to use 0<τ<∞. A z-statistic can be defined as follows: z = y i - μ σ The z value can be reported when a feature is detected and registered. Detecting Trends In a preferred embodiment, the meta-application 20 is also configured to profile application performance trends and, in appropriate circumstances, detect anomalous or problematic trends in certain telemetry signals. It is noteworthy that sources of knowledge (such as Microsoft™ Knowledge Base Articles) sometimes specify the existence of trends as conditions precedent for the recognition of problems. In preferred embodiments, the meta-application 20 provides “trend charts” that can be used to detect rising trends and/or descending trends. When a trend is detected, a feature is preferably generated and registered in the telemetry database 26. FIG. 13 shows a trend chart 106 for a monitored metric. The chart 106 includes two different bands. The top band shows an incoming telemetry signal 108 for the monitored metric. The lower band shows a waveform 110, which is the incoming signal 108 processed to detect “rising trends” and “descending trends.” The processed signal 110 is fed into a control chart 112, which is similar to the chart 95 shown in FIG. 12A. Accordingly, the upper and lower thresholds of the control chart 112 are each characterized by a zero-confidence level T0 corresponding to feature confidence of zero, a trigger-confidence level Tc corresponding to feature confidence of c, and a full-confidence level T1 corresponding to feature confidence of 1. The signal processing generates a positive or negative pulse when a rising or descending trend is detected. The squares 113 are features. A trend can occur when the input telemetry signal is strictly monotonic for a sufficient number of samples and time. Trends occur when the derivative (slope) of the smoothed input telemetry signal is uniformly positive or negative for a sufficient number of samples and time (the sustain samples NS and sustain time TS). The trend chart detects trends near their beginning points (the portions of the signal at which the trends begin) by effectively passing the derivative of smoothed input signals into a control chart. Many times, cyclic behavior can be observed in the performance of deployments 10 of infrastructure applications due to the patterns of human users. For example, for a deployment 10 of Microsoft Exchange™, every morning at 9 am mail servers might generally experience heavy load because everyone checks their email when they arrive at work. In another case, a large batch of emails may be sent at the end of each quarter to announce results to investors and shareholders of a financial company. In addition, managed applications 10 can have internally scheduled activities, such as daily backups, that can impact performance. In these instances, the meta-application 20 is preferably configured to profile cyclic application behavior, so that it recognizes these cyclic surges in use and does not report heavy load as a performance problem. In a preferred embodiment, the analysis subsystem 30 (preferably the feature detector 36) analyzes metrics' telemetry signals for each of a plurality of relevant time cycles (e.g., day, week, month, and year). A data set for each telemetry feed is preferably built, where the dimension representing time is normalized by computing the modulo of the time cycle. For example, Monday at 3 pm can be normalized to 3 pm on day 2 (assuming Sunday is day 1) for a one-week time cycle. FIG. 15 shows a “seasonal control chart” 146, which is preferably generated by the analysis subsystem 30 of the meta-application 20 for some or all of the monitored state metrics from the deployment 10. For example, seasonal control charts can be generated for those state metrics that are known or observed to behave cyclically. The chart 146 shows an input telemetry signal 148 for a given state metric (shown as a dotted line), and a normalcy band indicated by two lines 152. The normalcy band represents expected norms for a specific time of the, e.g., day, week, month, or year. In a preferred embodiment, if a telemetry data value falls outside the normalcy band, then corresponding features 150 (shows as squares) are registered, such as in the telemetry database 26. In a preferred embodiment, each of the upper and lower thresholds of the normalcy band can be characterized by a zero-confidence level T0 (corresponding to a feature confidence of zero), a trigger-confidence level Tc (corresponding to a feature confidence of c), and a full-confidence level T1 (corresponding to a feature confidence of 1). It will be understood that the confidence levels preferably comprise fluctuating waveforms. For ease of illustration, FIG. 15 only shows the full-confidence levels T1. In one embodiment, the waveforms of the illustrated seasonal control chart 146 are computed according to the following method. However, skilled artisans will understand from the teachings herein that other methods for computing seasonality waveforms can be used. In one embodiment, the analysis subsystem 30 lets a variable P be the period of the seasonal control chart (e.g. the time cycle) C. The seasonal control chart contains points (xi, yi). The distance between two times x and xi is given by the following equation: d ⁡ ( x , x i ) =  ( x - x i ) - round ⁡ ( x - x i P ) ⁢ P  This is ordinary Euclidean distance reduced modulo P. Kernel smoothing uses a nearest neighbor approach to determine the smoothing function. A function S(x) is defined as the c closest points of C to x, the c nearest points (xi, yi) to x as measured by d(x, xi). The “bandwidth” about x is given by: Δ(x)=max(d(x,x i),(x i ,y i)εS(x)) The weights of the kernel smoother are w ⁡ ( x , x i ) = W ⁡ ( d ⁡ ( x , x i ) Δ ⁡ ( x ) ) , where W(t) is an even function that peaks at t=0 and approaches zero as \|t\|→0. The function W(t) can be chosen as: W(t)=(1−t 2)2 If mu (μ) is the mean of the data in the chart 146, then the μ function μ(x) is given by: μ ⁡ ( x ) = ∑ ( x i , y i ) ∈ S ⁡ ( x ) ⁢ w ⁡ ( x , x i ) ⁢ y i ∑ ( x i , y i ) ∈ S ⁡ ( x ) ⁢ w ⁡ ( x , x i ) If sigma (σ) is the standard deviation of the data in the chart 146, then the sigma function σ(x) is given by: σ ⁡ ( x ) 2 = ∑ ( x i , y i ) ∈ S ⁡ ( x ) ⁢ w ⁡ ( x , x i ) ⁢ ( y i - μ ) 2 ∑ ( x i , y i ) ∈ S ⁡ ( x ) ⁢ w ⁡ ( x , x i ) Mu and Sigma are finally used to determine if a future data point falls outside of expected norms for a specific time of the day, week, month, year, etc. When a telemetry signal falls outside of these control lines (normalcy bands), a feature is generated, just like the control chart model (FIGS. 12A-C). Discrete Signals Some telemetry signals are “discrete,” meaning that they are made up of (xi,yi) points where yi take on discrete values. For example, signals consisting of service state values (stopping, paused, running) or event ID's are discrete signals. Since discrete values are not necessarily numerically comparable, numerical charts may not apply to discrete signals. A “discrete chart” can be used to convert real-time discrete signals into features that can be analyzed by the problem detector 38 (FIG. 1). In one embodiment, a discrete chart (or an associated algorithm) works by checking whether measured yi telemetry values are members of a specific set D of discrete values. If the yi values of the real-time discrete signal are members of the set D for a sufficient number of samples and a sufficient amount of time (the sustain samples NS and sustain time TS) then a feature is generated. FIG. 14 shows discrete chart 200 in accordance with one embodiment. The illustrated discrete chart 200 analyzes a discrete telemetry signal that is able to have, at any given time, one of four different values. The possible values are denoted as 203, 205, 206, and 208 (illustrated as rectangles with different cross-hatchings). An algorithm tests the telemetry signal for membership in the signal value states 203, 205, 206, and 208. In this example, during time intervals t1, t2, t3, t4, t5, and t6, the telemetry signal has signal values 203, 205, 206, 208, 205, and 203, respectively. Suppose the algorithm at work is interested in instances in which the telemetry signal has value 206. Accordingly, features 210 (represented as a broken horizontal line) are generated during interval t3. Features 210 are preferably only generated if the telemetry signal has value 206 for a sufficient amount of time (the sustain time TS) or a sufficient number of samples (sustain samples NS). Skilled artisans will appreciate that discrete charts can have a variety of different forms and can test for any number of different signal values. Other types of feature detection methods can also be employed, such as monitoring application error logs and conducting unit tests (e.g., by using “shims”) on components of the application deployment 10. A few examples of features are shown in the table below, for an embodiment in which the meta-application 20 monitors and manages a deployment 10 of Microsoft Exchange™. In the table, each row is a specific feature or “feature predicate” (explained below in the Problem Detection section). The “Name” is the name of the feature. The “Type” describes the method employed to detect the feature. The “Telemetry Meter” is the specific state metric from which the feature is detected. It will be appreciated that a feature need not always stem from a particular monitored state metric. Name Type Telemetry Meter Description CPU Control Machine.CPU Uses the control charts to Chart determine “abnormal” be- havior in CPU utilization Error Error N/A Creates a feature whose Log properties contain the in- formation from the error message in the Exchange log Process Control Process.ThreadCount Uses the control charts to Thread Chart determine “abnormal” be- Count havior in the number of threads used by a specific process CPU Trend Machine.CPU Determines when the CPU Increasing Chart utilization is consistently increasing Login Unit N/A Determines if it is possible Shim Test/ to login to an Exchange Shim mail using OWA (Outlook Web Access ™) Mail Flow Seasonal MailMes- Determines if the current Control sagesPerSecond mail flow is not “normal” Principle Component Analysis In one embodiment, the analysis subsystem 30 first uses Principle Component Analysis (PCA) to reduce the dimensionality or the amount of data in a set of telemetry signals fed into the feature detector 36. PCA is a mathematical technique for reducing the dimensionality of a dataset without losing useful information. Thus, a plurality of metrics gathered at each specific point in time can collated into one data point with values for each dimension (e.g., CPU, page faults per second, etc.), including time. This data set can be fed into a PCA algorithm to produce the reduced data set. The reduced data set has the same basic trends and characteristics as the input telemetry, but much less data. Thus, PCA can be considered a “noise eliminator.” PCA methods are well known in the art. Prediction and Resource Management Prediction is the act of guessing future values for some stream of telemetry data. The meta-application 20 can use prediction methods for a variety of purposes associated with managing a deployment 10, such as predicting the exhaustion of fixed resources (e.g., disk space), optimizing resource utilization (together with “provisioning”), and performance optimization. Predictions can be made about specific state metrics, the prediction of which might require multiple streams of telemetry. For example, a potential use of prediction is to predict the amount of free disk space given a list of disk performance metrics such as “disk writes/per second” or “current disk usage.” In this example, several streams of disk-related telemetry would be used as input. In another embodiment, the analysis subsystem 30 predicts the future behavior of a state metric by computing a mathematical model of the metric's telemetry signal as a function of time, as described above in the Feature Detection section of the present application, and then simply computing the metric's value at a given future time t. Skilled artisans will appreciate that other types of prediction methods can be employed. As mentioned above, three exemplary usage cases for the prediction algorithm are predicting the exhaustion of fixed resources, optimizing resource utilization or “provisioning,” and performance optimization. In predicting the exhaustion of fixed resources, a specific metric such as free disk space or network utilization can be predicted to warn of potential problems with the current deployment 10. For example, the meta-application 20 might predict that network traffic is growing at a certain rate and that in four to six months problems may arise from network bottlenecks. The second case involves provisioning. Provisioning is the process of determining the ideal way to distribute resource usage across several resource providers (e.g., the CPU is a resource provider). Future resource utilizations are used as the input to the provisioning algorithm instead of the current rates of resource utilization. This allows the meta-application 20 to better predict good distributions of resources for some time in the future, instead of an ideal distribution for the current situation. The third case involves optimization of the managed application 10. Usually, infrastructural applications have a variety of tuning parameters that can be used to improve performance in different hardware and network environments. For instance, the size of the TCP (Transmission Control Protocol) sending queue in the OS network stack will have different optimal values in different networks. Accordingly, the meta-application 20 can use the prediction algorithm to determine the optimal settings for these tuning parameters. Detection of Problem States Problem Logic Overview In preferred embodiments, the meta-application 20 stores, in its knowledge base 22, definitions of application “problems,” which are known problematic states of the managed application 10. Once, the meta-application 20 has identified unusual or anomalous features, the problem detector 38 uses problem identification algorithms to attempt to match logically defined combinations of features to problems. The particular knowledge encoding methodology and knowledge evaluation methods that the meta-application 20 uses to detect problems is generally referred to herein as “Problem Logic.” Problem Logic preferably uses an advanced “incremental query processor” configured to very quickly match a logical combination of features to problems defined by the Problem Logic rules stored in the knowledge base 22. When a feature is triggered, Problem Logic preferably uses a “discrimination network” (described below) to quickly determine which logic rules are potentially affected; however, a discrimination network is not absolutely required. Problem Logic may also evaluate raw telemetry data for purposes of detecting problems. Also, as features are added and removed from the feature list (preferably stored in the telemetry database 26), the query processor reconfigures itself to optimize problem detection. Matched problems are added to a “problem queue” (PQ). Each problem is assigned a “severity” and matched problems are sorted by severity in the problem queue. The meta-application 20 can change problem severity as it rates the impact of problems on the deployment 10 and also as it gets updates from the update server 56 (FIG. 2). Also, the associated feature that caused the problem may bump up the severity of the problem. For example, a feature resulting from a telemetry signal diverging from its baseline normalcy band by six standard deviations might produce a problem with a higher severity than if the signal diverged from its normalcy band by only two standard deviations. This section now proceeds by describing the theory behind the logical and syntactic structure of the Problem Logic used in a preferred embodiment of the meta-application 20. The Problem Logic is embodied in the logic rules stored in the knowledge base 22. In a preferred embodiment, the Problem Logic employs a language that is a modification of First Order Logic, and which includes temporal, causal, and modal operators. This language is used to encode the known problems' descriptions into the logic rules, which Problem Logic executes to determine if any of the encoded problems are currently present within the deployment 10. The meta-application 20 is preferably configured to analyze and quickly respond to large amounts of data. Accordingly, Problem Logic is preferably fast enough to be used in a real-time system. To accomplish this goal, Problem Logic is implemented by logic circuits similar to the hardware logic circuits on the computer chips of modern day computers, which are known to be fast. The Problem Logic circuits are not quite identical to hardware logic circuits because Problem Logic circuits push more than single bits of knowledge at a time along their “wires,” which are preferably virtual. Some definitions are now provided for ease of understanding of the following subject matter, which describes only a preferred embodiment of the Problem Logic. A logic rule or simply “rule” is a logical formula composed of predicates, logical operators (such as AND, OR, THEN, etc.), mathematical operators (such as less than, difference, sum, etc.), free variables, and constants. The formula describes how to recognize problems of the managed application 10. A “predicate” is a rule component that represents the existence of a single concept within the deployment 10. A predicate has a name and some number of arguments (which can be free variables or constants). An example of a predicate is server_version(?server, “6.5”), wherein “server_version” is the predicate's name, and “?server” and “6.5” are the arguments. In this example, “?server” is a free or “unbound” variable representing a server 12 (FIG. 1) of the deployment 10, and “6.5” is a constant representing version 6.5 of the server. A “bound” variable is a free variable in a rule that has been assigned a constant value. An “unbound” variable is a free variable in a rule that has not been assigned a value and thus can match any value of the right type. A “closed atomic formula” is a predicate whose arguments are all constants (i.e., none of the arguments are free variables. The meta-application 20 generates closed atomic formulae usually by analyzing the deployment 10 and producing predicates that represent deployment state. A “gate” is an internal Problem Logic construct that implements a rule connective (like AND gates or OR gates). Inputs pass through gates as the rule's formula is evaluated. Gates process the inputs according to the gate function (AND, OR, etc.) and then produce a single output (which may be an input to another gate). In some embodiments, rule confidence levels (discussed below) are calculated and propagated within the gates. An application model object is a single entity instance from the schema of the application model 24. “Rule triggering” or “matching” refers to the situation in which the problem detector 38 has successfully evaluated a rule's logical formula and the evaluation has returned a value of “True.” This means that the Problem Logic has detected a problem within the deployment 10. There can also be a confidence value on the rule. “Predicate triggering” refers to the situation in which a predicate is able to determine all possible instances in the deployment 10 that have its current set of arguments and can feed all of these instances into the Problem Logic. A predicate's “contribution” is the importance of the predicate in a rule, relative to all of the other predicates in that rule. A predicate's “need” can have two states: “required” and “optional”. A “required predicate” of a rule is a predicate that must be true in order for the rule to make sense and be true. Typically, most predicates are required. An “optional predicate” of a rule is a predicate that need not be true for the rule to be true. In other words, the rule will still make sense and match if the optional predicate is false. If the predicate is true then the “true” evaluation of the rule will have higher confidence. The concept of contribution is discussed more fully below. A predicate's “significance” is used to calculate whether a non unit confidence rule triggering is a false positive. The concept of significance is discussed more fully below. A “constant confidence” is a value attached to a constant, which indicates how strict a match should be. For example, if a predicate contains an argument “2.0” with a low assigned confidence, then a value of 1.9 or 2.1 might still match. If the confidence is high, then perhaps only a value of 2.0 will match. A “predicate confidence” is a value attached to a predicate, which indicates the degree of truth or confidence attributed to the predicate. A “rule confidence” is a value attached to a rule, which indicates the degree of truth or confidence attributed to a match of the rule. The concept of confidence is discussed more fully below. An example will help illustrate the Problem Logic approach. Consider the following logical formula that defines a logic rule: OR(AND(P(1,?x),Q(2,?x)),AND(P(2,?x),Q(1,?x))) FIG. 16 shows a Problem Logic circuit 156 for this formula, comprising gates A-H. The patterns associated with the gates are shown in the following table: Gate Pattern A P(1, ?x) B Q(2, ?x) C P(2, ?x) D Q(1, ?x) E AND(P(1, ?x), Q(2, ?x)) F AND(P(2, ?x), Q(1, ?x)) G OR(AND(P(1, ?x), Q(2, ?x)), AND(P(2, ?x), Q(1, ?x))) H OR(AND(P(1, ?x), Q(2, ?x)), AND(P(2, ?x), Q(1, ?x))) The logic circuit 156 consists of four “atomic gates” A-D (indicated as squares), two AND gates E and F, one OR gate G, and one rule gate H (indicated as a circle). The patterns of the atomic gates are the atomic formulas P(1,?x), Q(2,?x), P(2,?x), and Q(1,?x) that appear as predicates in the formula defining the rule. The names of the predicates are P and Q. Each predicate contains two arguments: a constant (either 1 or 2) and a free variable ?x. The pattern of each atomic gate is an “open atomic formula,” because it contains at least one free variable as an argument. The operation of Problem Logic circuit gates is now described. The Problem Logic circuitry receives ground instance atomic formulae that represent states of the deployment 10. For example, in the abovementioned rule, suppose the predicate P(1, ?x) by definition refers to an instance within the deployment 10 of a server 12 (represented by ?x, a free variable argument) running version 1.0 (represented by the constant 1 argument) of a particular software program. Suppose further that the deployment 10 only includes one server 12 running this version: server1. Then a ground instance atomic formula P(1, server1) can be fed into the atomic gates of the Problem Logic circuit 156 shown in FIG. 16. Ground instance atomic formulas can be constructed based on input telemetry or information obtained from the application model 24. The ground instance atomic formulas arrive at the atomic gates A-D of the circuit 156, where there is the possibility that the pattern of an atomic gate may match the input. If the free variables of the rule can be instantiated by a variable substitution in a way that the substituted pattern becomes equal to the input, then there is a match and a “bead” of information is sent on through the Problem Logic circuit along all output wires of the atomic gate. The “bead” is preferably stamped with several pieces of information, including a time interval containing the time of arrival of the input, a confidence indicating the degree of truth of the predicate, the contribution of the predicate, the significance of the predicate, and the satisfying variable substitution. In the logic circuit 156, if telemetry input P(1,3) is received, the first atomic gate A matches P(1,3) generating a bead of information consisting of substitution [[?x,3]] and a time interval [6:39 PM, 6:39 PM]. Once beads are placed on wires of a Problem Logic circuit, there is the possibility that they can join with beads on other wires to trigger later stage intermediate logical gates of the Problem Logic circuit. An OR gate (e.g., the OR gate G of FIG. 16) preferably just copies any input bead it receives to its output wires. An AND gate (e.g., the AND gates E and F) preferably checks if there are compatible beads (i.e., beads that match the binding variables in common between the two formulae) on all the other input wires. For instance, in the logic circuit 156 of FIG. 16, if a bead of telemetry input P(1,3) is received at one input wire of gate E, and if a bead of telemetry input Q(2,3) is received at the other input wire of gate E, then the beads are compatible because the variable ?x is bound to 3 in both beads. If there are compatible beads on the input wires of an AND gate, the union of the time intervals and the substitutions of every set of compatible beads is used to create new beads on the output wires of the AND gate. A THEN gate preferably works similarly to an AND gate, but with the additional condition that the time interval of a bead on the first input wire of the THEN gate must precede the time interval of a bead on the second input wire of the THEN gate in order for the THEN gate to be triggered and generate output beads. A rule gate (e.g., rule gate H) preferably just prints out the information of all the beads that it receives. Each gate preferably also takes the confidence, contribution, and significance of all the input beads and calculates the confidence, contribution, and significance of the output bead. Thus, when a bead is sent to a rule gate, there is a confidence, contribution, and significance value on that bead that represents those values for the entire rule. For example, an AND gate can take the minimum of the confidences of its inputs and assign that as the confidence of its output. An OR gate can take the maximum confidence of its inputs and assign that as the confidence of its output. Those skilled in the art will also recognize that the confidence, contribution, and significance calculations can be arbitrarily complex and can change dynamically during runtime. The meta-application 20 preferably employs an algorithm for propagation and generation of new beads. Whenever input is read from telemetry or an application model query, the input is applied to all of the atomic gates. Alternatively, a discrimination network can be used (see below) to determine all of the atomic gates of the Problem Logic circuitry that can possibly match the incoming ground instance atomic formulae. In either case, whenever any output bead is generated, by an atomic gate or by a later intermediate gate, a pair consisting of that bead and the wire the bead can be placed on is pushed onto a “to do” list. The “to do” list then looks like this: [[bead1, wire1], [bead2, wire2], . . . , [beadn, wiren]] The analysis subsystem 30 preferably executes a loop while the “to do” list is not empty. Each iteration of the loop pops a bead/wire pair off the “to do” list. The destination gate of the wire is then notified that the bead has arrived on the wire and the behavior function of the gate is allowed to (possibly) generate new [bead, wire] pairs that are placed on the “to do” list. Eventually, the logic circuitry acquiesces and the propagation loop terminates. Once that happens, the Problem Logic circuit is ready to read the next input. The behavior function of a logic gate generates a finite number of new beads on its output wires in response to the arrival of a bead on an input wire. The number of these beads generated is bounded by the number of output wires times the maximum of 1 and the product of the numbers of beads on the input wires. Additionally, Problem Logic circuits do not contain loops. The finite output of logic gates in response to an input and the absence of loops ensure that the propagation loop terminates. Rule Formats In preferred embodiments, Problem Logic has a flexible problem logic-encoding format that allows for the most error free and expressive way to represent logic rules. The encoding preferably allows for data to be attached to any component of a rule, in order to increase expressiveness or optimize performance by tagging rule components with hints. Accordingly, constraints are preferably added to the logical formulation of a rule to allow Problem Logic to automatically determine what queries (e.g., AM queries, telemetry queries, queries for the existence of features) to make and what metrics to gather to see if the rule is relevant and capable of being matched by the deployment 10. The components of a rule are logical connectives (AND, OR, THEN, etc.), constants, free variables, and predicates. Each predicate preferably has a predicate signature (defined by the predicate name and the number and type of arguments it requires) that defines valid uses of the predicate, data describing how the predicate interacts with a rule, and constraints describing when the predicate is most relevant. The variables have names. The constants have values. In evaluating a rule, the meta-application 20 looks at each predicate and its arguments and checks to see if that predicate is triggerable, meaning that the predicate is able to determine all possible instances in the managed deployment 10 with the predicate's current set of arguments and can feed the Problem Logic circuitry of the problem detector 38 with all of these instances. Predicate arguments that are free variables can be bound or unbound. If a free variable is unbound, the predicate triggering mechanism will bind the free variable when it sends new instances to Problem Logic. The predicate's free variable arguments become bound when a closed atomic formula (an incoming predicate instance with no free variables) is input into the problem detector 38. In this case, Problem Logic will match the input to a predicate, and any free variables in the predicate will be bound with the corresponding value in the closed atomic formula. Predicate arguments can also be string or real number constants. The following table describes the constructs used to generate Problem Logic rules, in accordance with one embodiment. RULE CONSTRUCT DESCRIPTION expr && expr Logical AND expr ∥ expr Logical OR expr1 THEN expr2 Expr2 occurs chronologically after Expr1 (expr) Parentheses can group expressions ?<name> A free variable, which can be used as a predicate argument or on its own value.[metadata=value] Generic way to attach metadata to a rule value value.[confidence=number] Attaches a confidence to a value. The default OR confidence is 1.0, signifying absolute confidence that the value.[conf=number] value is correct and should be matched exactly. predicate.[metadata_name=data]( Generic way to attach metadata to a predicate in a rule arg1, arg2, . . . ) predicate.[contribution=number]( Attaches a relative contribution number to a predicate arg1, arg2, . . . ) (relative to all other predicates in the rule). This number OR can be in any range. Problem Logic will normalize it as predicate.[cont=number](arg1, it calculates. The default value is 1.0 for all predicates. arg2, . . . ) The args are constant values possibly adorned with a [confidence=x] tag. The args can also be free variables (denoted with a ?<variable name> construction). predicate.[need=optional OR Specifies if the predicate is “required” or “optional” required](arg1, arg2, . . . ) which drives the logic gate calculations. For example, required predicates must exist in order for a bead to proceed through an AND gate but optional predicates can be missing. The args are constant values possibly adorned with a predicate.[significance=number]( Assigns a significance to the predicate that is used in rule arg1, arg2, . . . ) confidence calculation. For example, if a rule triggers with non unit confidence and all its predicates have lower than a threshold significance then the rule is deemed a false positive and not shown to the user. Any valid C expression involving The Problem Logic grammar will use the same syntax as predicates, free variables, values, C. Note: For most rules and predicates it is far superior and C operators (+, −, /, , << to embed a constraint expression into the predicate rather (left shift), >>(right shift), <, <=, than putting in the logic (i.e., use “t_metric(METER_ID, >, >=, ==) GT, 10)” instead of “t_metric(METER_ID, ?value) && ?value>10” because then the Feature Detector 36 can filter all irrelevant predicates, whereas in the second construction the Feature Detector will send ALL t_metric predicates (regardless of its relevance) and Problem Logic needs to filter out the irrelevant ones. Also, the Feature Detector can push the constraint down to the Telemetry Component 34, which can push it down to the monitors 14 so that the meta-application 20 can optimize its network bandwidth and not send any telemetry that does not meet the constraint. Each predicate preferably has data associated with it that indicates whether the predicate can trigger with a particular set of arguments (where each argument is associated with information whether it is allowed to be bound or unbound). There may be multiple sets of arguments that are valid for a predicate. In general, it is preferred to have only one set of arguments so that the knowledge encoder can more precisely dictate which version of a predicate is used to match incoming atomic formulae. When the meta-application 20 analyzes a rule, it scans all atomic inputs to the Problem Logic circuitry and matches them against predicates in rules. Some of these predicates will have only constant arguments and the match is easy, since it is only necessary to determine if the incoming atomic formula exactly matches the predicate. Other predicates will have free variables (like ?server) as arguments, and the problem detector 38 will match those predicates by assigning the value in the atomic formula to the free variable that is in the same argument position. This process will bind free variables. Most knowledge base articles start with some constraints on what systems may be involved (e.g., server must be running Exchange 2003™). These constraints can be encoded in a logic rule as a query of the application model 24, referred to herein as an “AM query.” An AM query can bind a variable by asking the application model 24 for information about the deployment 10. In some embodiments, a rule essentially breaks down into prerequisite AM queries that narrow down the list of application model 24 objects that are involved in the rule, as well as predicates that can query for telemetry or perform other probing on the application model objects from the prerequisite AM queries. In order to permit more flexible rule formulations, the Problem Logic rule format preferably does not enforce splitting a rule into prerequisite predicates and the rule body. Rules are preferably constructed so that after a first variable is bound, it is easy to bind the other variables because it is possible to find a predicate that links from the bound variable to another variable that the triggered predicate can bind. Knowledge base articles typically also have this natural flow in them. For example, a knowledge base article might specify that the problem occurs on Exchange 2003™ servers (one predicate, including a ?server argument, which can trigger without any other bound variables), where the “smarthost” is set (another predicate that can trigger if the ?server argument is bound, which it will be due to the first predicate), and the smarthost is not reachable by DNS (a telemetry predicate that can only trigger if given the smarthost name and the server from which it is trying to resolve, which the first two predicates bound). So a knowledge base article often naturally facilitates cascading predicates that bind each variable such that the next predicate can be triggered. Thus, Problem Logic is preferably itself responsible for telling the meta-application 20 what inputs to gather. Accordingly, there needs to be a way to “seed” Problem Logic with those initial atomic formulae, and the answer lies in the rules themselves. Each rule is designed such that it has some predicates that can “trigger” in the absence of bound variables in its argument list (i.e., it can trigger without any other context other than the arguments given during rule encoding). This can be a predicate that has some constant arguments and some free variable arguments. The predicate triggering procedure will take the constant arguments and generate all the closed atomic formulae that match the predicate. An example would be a predicate like “exchange_server_version(?server, “6.5”). In this case, the predicate is tagged as triggerable with only the second argument bound; thus, the triggering procedure will find all Exchange™ servers that are of version 6.5, and will produce closed atomic formulae for each one of them, producing input atomic formulae like “exchange_server_version(server1.exchange.com, 6.5).” These triggerable predicates trigger and send in new atomic formulae that then bind the free variables in their arguments. Other predicates, which depend on having those variables bound, can then be triggered, causing more free variables to bind until all free variables are bound and all predicates in a rule can trigger. Note that just because a predicate can trigger does NOT mean that it will pass an atomic formula into Problem Logic. Triggering means that the predicate has enough data to find out if it is true for the deployment 10. If it is not true, the predicate will not pass an atomic formula into Problem Logic, and usually this means that the rule will not trigger (depending on the logic of the rule). So rule encoding preferably ensures that a rule has enough “seed” predicates to begin the input gathering for evaluating the rule. Encoding also preferably ensures that there is a valid sequence of triggering that allows all free variables in the rule to be bound. Encoders can be given an XML file that describes all predicates and the set of arguments each predicate needs in order to trigger. Encoders can use this information to choose the right predicates to ensure that the meta-application 20 can automatically match the rule. As an example, consider the following logic rule (for simplicity, all predicate and rule metadata are omitted in this example): AND(A(?srv, “6.5”), B(?srv, ?disk), C(?disk, “FreeSpace”, LT, “50%”)) This rule includes three predicates: A, B, and C. It is known that A can trigger with its first argument unbound and its second argument bound. B can only trigger when “?srv” is bound and “?disk” is unbound. C can only trigger when “?disk” is bound and its other arguments are bound to values (in this example, “LT” is a logical connective meaning less than). When the problem detector 38 initially evaluates this rule, it determines that B and C cannot trigger. If A also cannot trigger then the rule would be flagged as invalid (a validation tool can be used to prevent such a rule from entering the system in the first place). Assume that A can trigger. The triggering procedure for A is called and then all instances of A that are true for the deployment 10 are passed into the corresponding Problem Logic circuit. When an instance of A is input, this will bind ?sry to a value. For example, suppose that A requires a server 12 (FIG. 1) running Microsoft Exchange™ version 6.5, and that the deployment 10 includes a server1 running this version. This instance will be fed into the logic circuit, and the ?sry variable will become bound to “server1.” The next time the problem detector 38 analyzes the rule it will see that ?sry is bound. Now B can trigger because ?sry is bound, but C cannot because ?disk is not bound. B triggers and all instances of B that match are passed in as closed atomic formulae. When an instance of B is input, it will bind ?disk. For example, B might simply require the existence of a hard disk on the server bound from predicate A. If server1 has a disk1, then feeding corresponding atomic formulae into the logic circuit will bind ?disk to “disk1.” Next, the problem detector 38 will evaluate the rule and see that ?sry and ?disk are bound. Now C can trigger because ?disk is bound. Because most servers will not have disks with FreeSpace<50%, even though C can trigger, it will usually not produce new instances. However, in this case assume that it does. This will cause the rule to trigger (i.e., be “True”) because the logic of the rule (all predicates must be true) has been fulfilled. Note that the rule is constructed such that there is a valid sequence of predicates that will bind variables in a particular order to allow all predicates to be tested. The order of predicates in a rule can help the problem detector 38 figure out what predicates to initially attempt to match. Predicates have a cost associated with a particular predicate/argument set pair and the problem detector 38 preferably uses this to determine which predicates to try first (it preferably tries the least costly predicates first). When all the predicates of a rule have the same cost, the problem detector 38 can be configured to use the order in which the predicates appear in the rule to determine which predicate to try first (i.e., the earlier a predicate appears, the more likely it will be tried first). In other embodiments, the problem detector 38 chooses which predicate to try first based on cost, such that encoders of knowledge need not worry about the order of the predicates. In fact, in many cases the cost of a predicate is a dynamic value that may change over time. For example, an AM query may be expensive at the start of operation of the meta-application 20, but after results are cached it may become cheap. As another example, a telemetry predicate (i.e., a predicate that asks for certain telemetry) may be initially expensive, but as other rules ask for the same telemetry predicate it may become cheap to subsequent rules. Discrimination Network To actually evaluate the Problem Logic rules, a “discrimination network” can be built from the rules and used to evaluate them simultaneously. When a feature is created, the problem detector 38 preferably uses the discrimination network to determine which rules to evaluate. In other words, the discrimination network allows the problem detector 38 to quickly determine which rules might possibly care about a given feature. Thus, a discrimination network can be thought of as an index mapping features to rules. It will be understood that some embodiments of the meta-application 20 do not include or use a discrimination network. It will also be understood that the discrimination network described below is just one embodiment of a discrimination network, and other variants are possible. Describing a discrimination network is most easily accomplished through an example. FIG. 17 shows an example of a discrimination network 158. The discrimination network 158 is an index into a database of key-value pairs, where the keys are open atomic formulae possibly containing free variables. Each key represents any predicate or sub-predicate whose existence indicates that a particular rule may be affected if that predicate is passed into Problem Logic. The illustrated discrimination network 158 associates values with the following keys: P(1,2), P(1,?y), P(?x,2), Q(?a,?b), P(1,R(?z)), and Q(?x,S(3,4)). The illustrated discrimination network 158 is a tree with labeled edges and labeled nodes. The edges leading to children of any given node always have distinct edge labels. Edge labels can be (1) a constant or function symbol of the logic, (2) X, representing a variable, and (3) Ti, a node label in the discrimination network, representing a subterm. A preferred algorithm for creating or locating the discrimination network associated with a particular n-ary term f(t1, . . . , tn) is: (1) Create or locate the discrimination network node T0 that is a child of the root node connected by edge labeled f. (2) For i=1 to n, compute edge label ki corresponding to subterm ti and create or locate the discrimination network node Ti that is child of node Ti-1 connected by edge labeled ki. (3) Create or locate the discrimination network node Tn+1 that is child of node Tn connected by edge labeled with the special label STOP. A preferred algorithm for computing the edge label corresponding to a term t is: (1) If t is a constant, the edge label is t. (2) If t is a variable, the edge label is the special label X, representing a variable. (3) If t is a non-atom, the edge label is the discrimination network node label of the node reached by entering t into the discrimination network. With continued reference to the discrimination network 158 shown in FIG. 17, the following describes a preferred method of locating the discrimination network node associated with term Q(?x,S(3,4)). The relevant part of the discrimination network is shown in FIG. 18. The method begins with the term Q(?x,S(3,4)). The root node is N0. The child off the root node N0 connected by edge labeled Q is N1. The edge label corresponding to variable ?x is special label X. The child off node N1 connected by edge labeled X is N2. The edge label corresponding to subterm S(3,4) has to be computed by a recursive call which determines that the node index reached by entering S(3,4) into the discrimination network 158 is T2. The edge label corresponding to subterm S(3,4) is T2. Continuing the entry of Q(?x,S(3,4)), the child off node N2 connected by edge labeled T2 is N6. Finally, the child off node N6 connected by edge labeled by special label STOP is N7. Therefore, the discrimination network node corresponding to Q(?x,S(3,4)) is N7. The following describes a preferred embodiment of fetching information out of a discrimination network. The objective of information retrieval is to submit an atomic formula f to the discrimination network and then retrieve all discrimination network nodes corresponding to atomic gate patterns g that could possibly match f. Each discrimination network node stores a list of atomic gates of the Problem Logic circuitry that need to be tested in case the discrimination network node is retrieved. Consider the following example, with reference to FIG. 19. Suppose it is desired to retrieve all the discrimination network indices for input formula P(1,R(5)). The preferred approach is to advance a list of indices through the discrimination network as P(1,R(5)) is consumed. This approach is also recursive, as determining lists of indices for subterms may also be necessary. The method begins with the list of indices [N0], the singleton list containing the root node of the discrimination network. The input formula being consumed is P(1,R(5)). So, for each node N in the list [N0], the method proceeds by looking for a child connected by edge labeled P to form the next list, which is [N8]. Next, the “1” subterm of P(1,R(5)) is consumed. Since the “1” is a constant, for each node N in the list [N8] the method involves looking for a child connected by edge labeled 1 or X to form the next list, which is [N9,N16]. Since variables can match 1, the method fetches nodes led to by edges labeled X. Next, the R(5) subterm of P(1,R(5)) is consumed. Since R(5) is not an atom, this is less straightforward than the previous step. First, possible edge labels corresponding to R(5) are determined. This is accomplished by a recursive call which returns a list of possible keys [T1,X]. So, for each node N in the list [N9,N16], the method looks for a child connected by edge labeled T1 or X to form the next list which is [N12,N14]. Since the term P(1,R(5)) has now been consumed, the method proceeds by looking, for each node N in [N12,N14], for a child connected by edge labeled STOP to form the next list, which is [N13,N15]. The candidate matching atomic gates stored at N13 and N15 are the atomic gates having patterns P(1,?y) and P(1,P(?z)). These patterns are two of the six patterns used to create the discrimination network example in FIG. 17. After the discrimination network facilitates retrieval of all discrimination network nodes corresponding to atomic gate patterns g that could possibly match input f, the input f is submitted as input to each of these atomic gates of Problem Logic in turn. Each input submission to an atomic gate may generate a match, a bead of information to be sent out on all output wires, along with further propagation through intermediate logical gates. Predicate Metadata Some third party applications (i.e., other than the managed application 10) provide numerous methods for instrumentation and monitoring, which can be used by system administrators to maintain a deployment 10. The meta-application 20 can preferably utilize these streams of data to monitor the health of the deployment 10. However, continuously monitoring every stream would place undo strain on the application 10 itself and the network infrastructure in which it is deployed. Thus, the meta-application 20 preferably chooses which streams provide the most value and when to listen to each stream. The Problem Logic's active state is preferably used with other metadata to determine which feeds are currently the most vital. Problem Logic, embodied within the problem detector 38 and the logic rules within the knowledge base 22, can take closed atomic formulae and match them against rules. But this means that Problem Logic must be fed all relevant formulae about the deployment 10 before all matching rules for that deployment can be produced. It is desirable to detect all possible rule matches, because a single undetected rule match may correspond to a problem that brings the system down. In order to comprehensively detect rule matches, Problem Logic is preferably fed all relevant predicates that the deployment 10 can generate. To do this, Problem Logic evaluates each rule and determines what metric measurements (or functions of metric measurements) need to be enabled and what database queries (e.g., AM queries, queries to the telemetry database 26) need to be executed. Each rule is a logical composition of predicates. So by finding all relevant closed atomic formulae for a rule and feeding them into Problem Logic, the problem detector 38 can determine if the deployment 10 has a problem described by a rule. In embodiments of the meta-application 20, Problem Logic cannot detect a problem unless there is a rule for it, and that rule can be analyzed to reveal what metrics and queries can be run to feed all relevant atomic formulae into Problem Logic. This means that the Problem Logic will not be able to take a random series of features and correlate them, unless there is a rule that defines the correlation relationship among them. The RCA module 41 can correlate rule matches (i.e., “problems”) and random features to application model 24 components that may require attention. Those skilled in the art will recognize that other non rules-based algorithms can take a random series of features and produce a correlation and problem identification. For example, such algorithms can use information from the application model 24 to relate features to components in the application model, using metadata in the application model 24 to direct analysis. Predicates in Problem Logic play dual roles. The first role is to define a matching mechanism for a rule. Closed atomic formulae (which are predicates with no free variables) are fed into Problem Logic and matched against the predicates that comprise a rule. To enable matching, the rule predicate needs to have a name and arity, and its argument terms need to be constants or free variables. The second role of a predicate is to define how Problem Logic can automatically generate closed atomic formulae from a predicate in a rule. In this case, the predicate preferably has enough metadata associated with it to generate all possible closed atomic formulae relevant to the deployment 10. Problem Logic preferably creates the closed atomic formulae using metadata associated with the predicate, which indicates how to generate all relevant possibilities. Note that it may be necessary for some of the predicate argument terms to be assigned a specific value before the predicate can generate closed atomic instances of itself that are specific to the deployment 10. For example, if a “cpu_slow(?srv)” predicate is needed, it cannot be generated until the meta-application 20 knows the deployment server (the “?srv” variable) on which CPU usage should be measured. Once the server 12 (FIG. 1) is known, the meta-application 20 can activate an appropriate CPU feature detector on that server. In some predicates, especially those specifying database queries (e.g., AM queries or telemetry database queries), it may be sufficient if only some of the arguments are specified. For a query like “server_is_version(?srv, ?version),” as long as the version is specified (e.g., “5.5” or “6.0”), the predicate can then generate all deployment servers 12 (the “?srv” variable) that match that version (e.g., by running an AM query like show_all_servers_of_version(“6.0”) to find all matching servers 12). If the version is not specified, then the only viable option is to enumerate all servers of all versions in the deployment 10, which would be expensive if in turn all feature detectors on all servers are activated. In a preferred embodiment, a predicate's metadata lists the valid sets of arguments that allow the predicate to generate atomic formulae itself (the process by which predicates generate closed atomic instances of themselves is called “triggering”). AM query predicates can trigger as long as a valid set of arguments is specified. It is ordinarily not necessary for all of the arguments to be specified. Other predicates, especially telemetry-based “feature predicates” (i.e., logic rule predicates that specify the existence of features, which may involve appropriate activation of the feature detector 36 and associated telemetry feature detection methods discussed above), need all arguments specified before they can generate their own atomic formulae. In a preferred embodiment, triggering for feature predicates is a two-step process. First, Problem Logic specifies all of the arguments of the feature predicate, which then is able to register a feature request (i.e., a request that the feature detector 36 look for the specified feature). For example, the feature predicate may a request to check whether the CPU of a specific server is slow (e.g., check for “cpu_slow” on server “exmb1.Company.com”). Second, the feature detector 36 then initiates the gathering of metrics necessary to fulfill the request. In this case, the feature predicate preferably has enough metadata information to allow the feature detector 36 to do this, which implies a coupling between the feature detector requirements for metric specification and Problem Logic rules and predicates. If the specified feature is found in the telemetry, the feature detector 36 sends the feature information to the problem detector 38 (e.g., the feature detector 36 can call a callback in the problem detector 38 with the feature information), and the feature information is converted into a closed atomic formula and fed into Problem Logic or sent to any other algorithm in problem detector 38. Of course, registration of a feature detection request does not guarantee that the feature will be true and passed in as a closed atomic formula. That depends on the deployment 10 and its actual telemetry. Note that feature predicates have a potentially significant cost associated with them (monitoring resources, storage for historical data, etc.) and are preferably carefully chosen. The following table lists some useful types of predicate metadata, in a preferred embodiment of the meta-application 20: Metadata Description Name Name of the predicate. The same predicate name may appear many times because there are many combina- tions of argument states that are valid. Functionality Can be either an ID that uniquely identifies a feature detector or a parameterized query string like “(EXCHANGE[name=%1] and EXCHANGE[version=%2])”. The parameters are the predicate arguments Argument 1 state Specified (argument must be bound to a value) or unspecified (argument must be left unbound) Argument 1 type If state = specified, then the type of the argument. Type could be one of: string, float, integer, Application Model object type Argument 2 state Similar to argument 1 state Argument 2 type Similar to argument 1 type Argument N state Similar to argument 1 state Argument N type Similar to argument 1 type Cost A measure of the “cost” of triggering this predicate (normalized to be a number between 0 (no cost) and 1 (very expensive)) with these arguments. This may be a dynamic quantity that changes over time. Severity A number in [0, 1] where 1 indicates total failure of all components affected by the rule and a number in (0, 1) indicates degradation of service to the compo- nents (see discussion on Importance below) and 0 means no impact. Need [per rule] Two states: “required” or “optional”. Used by gates to determine how to deal with the fact the predicate is missing as in input to the gate. Contribution [per A numerical value in [0, 1] where 0 indicates little rule] importance to the rule and 1 indicates very strong importance to the rule Used by gates to calculate overall confidence in the rule. Significance [per A numerical value in [0, 1] where 0 indicates that rule] the predicate by itself should not allow a non-unit confidence rule to display to the user and 1 indicates that if the predicate is missing that a non-unit confi- dence rule should not display to the user. Basically a metric to allow Problem Logic to filter out “false positive” rule triggerings. Thus, Problem Logic rules are preferably logical combinations of various predicates, each with different triggering requirements. Each rule should have at least one predicate that can trigger without any arguments specified. Otherwise, the rule will not be able to “start” because no atomic formulae relevant to the rule have been passed in and no parts of the rule will match. And, the variables that are bound by the initial “start” predicates should allow the other predicates to trigger, which will bind other variables, and allow more predicates to trigger, etc., until all relevant atomic formulae have been fed into Problem Logic and the rule has matched or not. These are significant yet preferred restrictions on the encoding of knowledge. Seeding Predicates into Problem Logic One way of relaxing the “start” predicate restriction is to “seed” the meta-application 20 with a fixed set of atomic formulae (generated based on the deployment 10 configuration) that it always feeds into Problem Logic, with the hope that these initial formulae allow rules to match. Logically, this “no arguments required” predicate restriction assumes that the “seed predicates” are not completely unrelated and do not require multiple specified arguments making up a rule. If the seed predicates were unrelated, this would intuitively mean that Problem Logic would be looking at features or database queries that have no logical or physical connection to each other in the context of a rule. The “seeding” approach merely moves the task from determining how Problem Logic should analyze rules and automatically generate atomic formulae to determining how Problem Logic should figure out which atomic formulae should always be fed into it. One approach is to analyze each logic rule to determine how to generate “seed” atomic formulae. Rules are assumed to have a “valid” construction, meaning that the rule has some initial predicates that “start” the rule. These predicates bind values to variables, which then trigger new predicates that needed a single variable to be bound, which the seed predicates provided. Then these secondary predicates bind more variables and more predicates can now trigger, and so on until the rule is matched. In a preferred embodiment of the seeding approach, Problem Logic performs the following steps when it is initially activated: 1. Load all rules 2. Load predicate metadata 3. Identify all predicates in rules 4. Identify all seed predicates that can trigger 5. Choose seed predicates to trigger (based on minimum cost, maximum problem detection probability, and/or other algorithms) 6. Trigger the seed predicates (may be asynchronous) and convert results into closed atomic formulae 7. Send formulae into Problem Logic, which will bind new variables and allow additional predicates to potentially trigger This initial startup phase will analyze rules and “seed” Problem Logic with deployment-specific atomic formulae that will then bind free variables in rule predicates to specific values and allow Problem Logic to start matching rules. The seed predicates are typically produced by database queries within the rules, which help to restrict the set of devices/circumstances that the rules match against. Thus, upon start-up of the meta-application 20, Problem Logic preferably begins sampling the universe of the deployment 10 and immediately restricts its analysis only to those things that could possibly matter to a rule. It is preferable to properly restrict analysis at this point, because if the analysis is too restrictive, then the meta-application 20 may miss problems. However, if the analysis is too broad, the meta-application 20 may unnecessarily flood the network with useless and expensive telemetry monitoring requests. The meta-application 20 is preferably able to show a level of “confidence” that it has in a matched logic rule or problem. In one approach, the logic in Problem Logic is a traditional non-fuzzy logic with behavior that depends on either true or false values. In this non-fuzzy logic approach, the confidence of a rule is a calculation based on the confidence values assigned to each predicate of the rule. Confidence values of the predicates are preferably transformed as the predicates pass through rule gates. However, the gates themselves do not change their traditional logic behavior. For example, if a predicate has a non-zero confidence of being true, then an OR gate will trigger because, as far as the OR gate is concerned, that input is true. In other words, confidence is a value that is passed along during Problem Logic operation, but does not otherwise affect Problem Logic calculations. In this non-fuzzy logic or “probability” a predicate can only have a true or false value, and a confidence value attached to the predicate is a measure of the probability that the predicate is true. For example, a predicate having a confidence value of 80% means that there is an 80% probability that the predicate is true. Note that since any predicate that shows up in Problem Logic is assumed to be true, and false ones do not show up, this discussion centers on degrees and probabilities of truth. In an alternative, fuzzy logic approach, predicates are assigned degrees of truth ranging from 0% (absolutely false) to 100% (absolutely true). For example, a predicate having a confidence of 80% means that the predicate is 80% towards true. The type of confidence value (probability or fuzzy logic) of each predicate can depend upon the nature of the predicate. Predicates like “CPU_slow” (requiring that a certain CPU is currently slow) and “disk_full” (requiring that a certain disk is full) describe concepts that intrinsically have a vagueness that can advantageously be captured in a confidence value. This confidence is more like a fuzzy logic truth value, involving increasing degrees of truth as the confidence value increases, as opposed to a situation where the CPU is either slow or not and the confidence value is a probability that the CPU is indeed slow. Predicates involving database queries (e.g., an AM query) often have a definite truth or falsehood associated with them, and in such cases do not need associated confidence values (i.e., confidence will always be 100% or 0%). If there is some kind of constraint in the database query (e.g., count(set)>X), then the query could have an associated confidence indicating how close the query came to the constraint. Predicates involving telemetry queries (which are typically features where the telemetry or metric is unchanged) also usually have a definite truth or falsehood. However, if the telemetry query has a constraint, then the meta-application 20 can assign a confidence value describing how close the query came to the constraint. For example, if the telemetry query includes the constraint “PerfMon_counter>10,” and if the counter is 9.9999999999999, it may not be appropriate to compute that the predicate is false. Thus, a confidence value can help, where instead of the problem detector 38 finding that the predicate is false with the counter equal to 9.9999999999999 (operationally, this means that the Problem Logic circuitry actually does not receive the predicate at all, since it is false), Problem Logic computes that the predicate is true, with a confidence value that is high but not 100%. Again, this is more like a fuzzy logic degree of truth-value, rather than a probabilistic interpretation of concrete truth. Note that using a fuzzy logic approach causes Problem Logic to generate more problems, because more predicates are allowed to pass through as true than with strict two-value logic. Many of these rule triggerings will have non-unit confidences. The meta-application 20 preferably has a graphical user interface (GUI) 29 (FIG. 1) that analyzes each problem's confidence computation to avoid making a low-confidence problem appear as a false positive (i.e., a declared problem that in reality does not exist). In addition, Problem Logic can use predicate significance to determine which rule triggerings will be allowed. For example, one implementation could specify that if a rule triggers only with predicates that have low significance then the triggering will not be allowed, thereby reducing the number of perceived “false-positives”. Partial Problem Matching and Contributions The meta-application's GUI 29 preferably shows problems that are “partially” matched so that the administrator of the deployment 10 can learn about problems that are “almost triggered.” Problem confidence can advantageously provide a measure of how close the partially matched problem is to triggering. Partial matches can also include those rules/problems for which only some of the predicates have matched. Suppose a rule evaluated by Problem Logic contains some predicates that have matched (i.e., are true) and other predicates that have not triggered at all. In displaying the problem associated with this rule, the GUI 29 can show the predicates that matched along with their confidence values. The GUI 29 can show the non-matched predicates as completely unmatched. Problem Logic does not really have any other information about how close the non-matched predicates are to matching, because false predicates never even show up in Problem Logic processing. In one embodiment, the meta-application 20 provides a measure of how close a partially matched rule is to triggering by simply counting the number of atomic gates in a rule and computing a percentage equal to the amount of those gates that are matched. While this approach may prove useful in many situations, it ignores the fact that logic rules have logical constructions that constrain what atomic formulae will match a rule. For instance, it is possible that a rule with nine of ten atomic gates matched can actually be less matched than a rule with only four atomic gates matched but with the right values to allow the rule to proceed further in the logic evaluation. For example, consider the following two rules R1 and R2: R1: P1 and P2 and P3 and (P4 or P5 or P6 or P7 or P8 or P9 or P10) R2: Q1 and Q2(Q1) and Q3(Q1) and Q4(Q1) Regarding R1, assume that P4-P10 are true and P1-P3 are false. With seven of the ten predicates true, the GUI 29 could report that R1 is 70% matched. Regarding R2, assume that Q1 and Q2 are true (the notation Q2(Q1) indicates that Q2 is a predicate that depends on Q1) and Q3 and Q4 are false. With two of the four predicates true, the GUI 29 could report that R2 is 50% matched. However, logically R2 is “more true.” R2's logic circuit has an AND gate with four inputs, two of which are true and the other two of which are false (and the false predicates depend on Q1, which is true). In contrast, R1's logic circuit has an AND gate with four inputs, one of which is true (the input involving P4-P10) and three of which are false. Therefore, simply reporting the percentage of predicates that are true is not necessarily the most accurate way to determine how close a partial rule is to triggering. In other embodiments, the meta-application 20 utilizes the confidence of each predicate of a rule and treats missing predicates in a special way, depending upon the types of gates in the rule. For OR gates, Problem Logic preferably compensates for the fact that a currently missing (i.e., false) predicate might trigger the OR gate. Problem Logic only feeds true predicates into the atomic gates of the logic circuitry. If there are any non-empty input lines to the OR gate, then it preferably uses the maximum of all the confidence values of the true incoming predicates and ignores the missing inputs. If there were no inputs (i.e., true incoming predicates), then a computed confidence value for the OR gate would be zero. For an AND gate, a missing input predicate means that a term is false and the AND gate should not trigger. However, in a logic rule with an AND connective, the input predicates to the AND gate may differ in relative importance. Thus, if an input predicate is false, it may not be appropriate to simply set the confidence of the AND gate to zero. Preferably, Problem Logic can compensate for the fact that a missing input predicate might be much less important to this particular AND gate. Note that the relative importance of predicates in a rule depends upon the rule. Some rules (or sub-rules) need all the predicates of an AND gate to be true in order for the rule (or sub-rule) to be true. For example, suppose a sub-rule requires that a particular server is running Microsoft Exchange™ AND the server's disk is slow AND the server's CPU is slow. Suppose further that the server's disk and CPU are slow, but the server is not running Exchange™. In this case, the confidence of the AND gate really should be zero, because the sub-rule only applies to Exchange™ servers. Now suppose the sub-rule also contains another input to the AND gate, the additional input being some arcane Exchange™ attribute that can perhaps be ignored in certain circumstances. In this case, if the server is running Exchange™ and its disk and CPU are slow, but the fourth predicate is false, it may be appropriate to compute a non-zero confidence. In a preferred embodiment of the meta-application 20, relative “contribution” values or designations are assigned to each predicate within individual logic rules stored in the knowledge base 22. The contribution preferably defines the relative importance of the predicate with respect to all other predicates in the rule. This allows Problem Logic to process contribution through all gates of the circuit and not just at the atomic gates. In one embodiment, Problem Logic also includes a “need” designation that includes the two states “required” and “optional.” In another embodiment, the contributions comprise numerical values. For example, the contribution can be a number between 0 and 1, wherein a value of 1 signifies an absolutely essential contribution and a value of 0 signifies no contribution (a value of zero is actually inappropriate, because it would mean that the predicate should not really be an input into the gate). Problem Logic can use these numbers to determine how to adjust the confidence of an AND gate. If the contribution for a missing predicate is tagged as “required,” then the AND gate will preferably produce a confidence of 0 (0% confidence that the AND gate output is true) because the missing predicate is essential to the rule and is interpreted as false (the essential input wire to the AND gate has 0% confidence), which immediately makes the output of the AND gate false. For instance, in the aforementioned example, the predicate describing that the server is running Exchange™ is preferably assigned a need value of “required,” because the rule only applies to Exchange™ servers. Thus, if the server is not running Exchange™, the AND gate confidence would be computed to be 0%. If the need values of all of the missing terms (i.e., predicates) are optional, then their contributions each preferably have a floating point value (e.g., a number closer to 0 than to 1). Problem Logic can be configured to sum up the confidence values of the non-missing terms and multiply by the ratio of the sum of contributions of the non-missing terms over the sum of contributions of all terms, essentially normalizing the gate inputs based on contributions. So, in evaluating a rule or sub-rule, if a missing term is some arcane Exchange™ attribute, its contribution can be set to a small value and the net effect would decrease the output confidence but not truncate it to 0. This makes sense because the missing term has a finite probability of making the AND output false. Thus, while the confidence that the AND gate is true is reduced, since the contribution of the missing term to the AND gate is minimal, Problem Logic preferably does not truncate the output confidence to zero, but instead decreases it by some small amount. Similar calculations can be done for an OR gate. In a preferred implementation, rather than normalizing inputs they are simply summed, and the sum is clamped to 1.0 if it exceeds 1.0. This approach avoids reducing the confidence of the output bead simply because new low confidence input beads were presented to the OR gate. This captures the spirit of the OR gate, which is that it triggers when any one input is true, and other true (or partially true) inputs should not reduce the confidence. Those skilled in the art will also recognize that the confidence calculations for gates can be arbitrarily complex and can change dynamically during runtime based upon things like feedback data on the efficacy of previous rule firings (e.g number of false-positives and the number of successful resolutions). Problem Logic Operational Summary The following describes what the Problem Logic components do when they are running, in a preferred embodiment of the meta-application 20: 1. Accept incoming closed atomic formulae, each formula having a confidence associated with it. Incoming atomic formulae come from: a. AM query callbacks. A callback is associated with each AM query. The application model 24 will call the callback anytime an application model state changes and the change could potentially affect the query results. The callback will look at the new results and compare it with the old results, and if it sees any changes it will pass those changes into Problem Logic as closed atomic formulae. b. Feature Detector callbacks. A callback is associated with each feature-detection predicate (i.e., a predicate that requires the existence of a specific feature and asks the feature detector 36 to look for that feature). The callback will be called when a feature is calculated. The feature will also have a confidence calculated. The callback will convert the feature into a closed atomic formula with a confidence value. 2. Pass atomic formulae into all rules that could possibly care about them. 3. For each rule, use formulae to bind variables, creating beads, and push the beads as far as possible from the atomic gates to the rule gates. a. For each gate, calculate the gate confidence of the output wire. These output wires will be the input wires of subsequent gates, so all gate inputs have a confidence value. b. Store each new variable binding on the rule. 4. If a rule gate output wire is reached, indicating that a rule has matched, send the match to the remedy selector 40. a. The rule gate output wire will also have a confidence, representing a confidence that the rule has matched. 5. Propagate the beads of all rules as far as possible within Problem Logic circuitry. For all rules, check to see if any new variable bindings have been added. If so, then: a. Generate all possible relevant variable combinations using old variable bindings and the new ones b. For each predicate, Problem Logic can calculate the cost of triggering the predicate with each set of variable combinations (each predicate provides this functionality) 6. Problem Logic chooses which predicate to trigger a. Problem Logic bases its choice on an optimization algorithm that considers the cost of the predicates and the current value of each predicate to the rule (in this context, “value” means the worth of the predicate in resolving the logic of the rule to a trigger state). For example, if there is just one more predicate at a certain gate that is required to trigger a rule with high output confidence, then it makes sense to trigger this predicate, even though it might be expensive, versus a predicate at another gate which will not trigger a rule or trigger it with a low confidence. b. This is where Problem Logic sequences predicate requests to fulfill multiple conflicting requirements: i. Predicate Request Sequencing: Minimize the cost of rule matching by only turning on expensive predicates when it most matters. Cost is calculated by the predicate itself (based on predicate metadata) and is not necessarily fixed. For AM queries, the application model 24 may cache queries so that the cost of querying information may decrease dramatically for subsequent queries. For feature-detection queries, if the feature detector 36 is already looking for a particular feature based on a query from another rule, then the cost for new rules to query for the same feature will be lower. ii. Partially Matched Problems: Maximize visibility into rule matching by turning on all possible predicates to get the most accurate confidence number (identify those predicates that, if true, would trigger the rule). Because of the logical nature of the rule, not all predicates are equally important in this regard. An administrator of the deployment 10 can send “hints” to Problem Logic, via the GUI 29, as to which rules need to have complete information on partial rule matching. For example, the administrator can be permitted to inform Problem Logic that something is a problem, by artificially triggering a feature, or that something is not a problem, by turning off a feature predicate. Also, the administrator is preferably able to select a deployment device and ask for all partially or fully matched problems and their confidences. This may disallow short-circuiting AND gates and OR gates and may also disallow other optimizations based on cost or likelihood, because the meta-application 20 is now concerned about the confidence of all predicates, in order to calculate an accurate confidence. iii. “Volume” control based on confidence: Change predicate sampling frequencies (choosing from a set of standard sampling frequencies to help simplify implementation of telemetry component 34) based on confidence that a rule is about to match (using confidence calculation). If Problem Logic is very confident that a rule is close to matching, increase the sampling frequency for those predicates that are missing and would allow the rule to match. This will generate a new predicate request and may replace a previous request. iv. “Volume” control based on bandwidth: Change predicate sampling frequencies based on monitored bandwidth usage. Problem Logic rules are not too sensitive to predicate sampling frequencies, so volume control optimizations should not be too disruptive. This will generate a new predicate request and may replace a previous request. 7. Run the trigger procedure for all predicates marked for triggering, which will register new callbacks with the feature detector 36 and application model 24. 8. Old and new callbacks get called when new results are available, which are converted to closed atomic formulae. 9. Send closed atomic formulae to Problem Logic and go to step 1, continuing the normal rule matching process. Problem Logic Learning In a preferred embodiment, the meta-application 20 is configured to “learn” about the success and failure of executed remedies, and adjust the Problem Logic circuitry accordingly. A Problem Logic circuit associates a confidence between 0 (low confidence) and 1 (high confidence) to every matching problem. The confidence is calculated as if the Problem Logic circuit were a small feed-forward neural network. Each type of logic gate (AND, OR, etc.) has its own activation function (fAND, fOR, etc.). The activation function for an entire logic circuit is a composition of the activation functions of the constituent gates. For learning purposes, it is beneficial for the activation functions to be sigmoidal functions that are multivariate, nonlinear, continuous, smooth, and generally monotonic functions. The logic gate activation functions input confidences xi fed forward by input features or input logic gates. Additionally, the logic gate activation functions also input tunable connection weights wi, which are the predicate contribution values of Problem Logic. Thus, as the meta-application 20 learns about the success and failure of executed remedies, it can “tune” the predicate contribution values of Problem Logic. Consider the logic circuit shown in FIG. 16. A corresponding confidence activation function for the circuit is as follows: f(a,b,c,d,w a ,w b ,w c ,w d)=f OR(f AND(a,b,w a ,W b),f AND(c,d,w c w d)) The artificial neuron appearing in a typical multilayer neural network may compute its output as y=f(w 1 x 1 + . . . +w n x n +b), where f is some universal basis function such as tan h. However, for purposes of Problem Logic, it is preferred that fAND and fOR sigmoidal activation more approximately resemble classic boolean AND and OR functions. Accordingly, the following are chosen: f AND(x,w)=1/2 tan h(w 0 +x 1 w 1 + . . . x n w n)+1/2 f OR(x,w)=1/2 tan h(w 0 w 1 x1 . . . w n xn)/1/2 Problem Logic confidence calculations are preferably based on well-established neural network theory, so it is possible to train the confidence calculations of Problem Logic circuits via supervised learning, just as it is possible to train neural networks via supervised learning. A Problem Logic circuit can be trained by providing a training set of matching problems and target confidences (generally either accept=1 or reject=0). A stochastic back-propagation algorithm, amounting to gradient descent, can be repetitively applied to examples in the training set until sufficient convergence of the connection weights of the Problem Logic circuit being trained is achieved. The following is a stochastic back-propagation algorithm: Stochastic Back-propagation Algorithm: initialize weights w, criterion θ, learning rate η; x=randomly chosen training pattern; for (i=1;i<=n;i++) { wi=wi−η @E(x,w)/@wi if (∥rE(x,w)∥<θ) break; The above-shown algorithm includes the following variables: The parameter x is the input feature confidences. The parameter w is the connection weights. The parameter θ is the stopping criterion. The parameter η is the learning rate. The parameter n is the number of connection weights. The function E(w,x) is equal to ½ (z-t)2. The parameter t is the target confidence. The parameter z is the calculated confidence, f(x,w). The parameter r is (@/@w1, . . . , @/@wn). It will be understood that if a feature is not present in the training pattern, then the confidence xi=0 for the missing feature. The Stochastic Backpropagation Algorithm can be used to train or improve the confidence calculation connection weights of a Problem Logic circuit. Deployment Healing Healing Overview When Problem Logic matches a rule, it registers a problem and informs other modules of the meta-application 20. Since, in a preferred embodiment, there can be multiple active problems (i.e., problems flagged as currently existing and for which resolution has not yet been confirmed), the meta-application 20 is preferably configured to determine the relative “severity” of problems and sort the problems by importance. In a preferred embodiment of the meta-application 20, most or all of the problems are encoded with a “severity” and a remedy that contains a list of possible plans. Such information can be stored in any convenient location, and preferably in the knowledge base 22 and/or plan database 28. The remedy selector 40 preferably uses remedy selection algorithms to globally review all active problems and their potential remedies and select remedies for the most severe problems first. Each remedy can have a “resolution policy” that indicates how that remedy interacts with other remedies and problems. For example, a remedy may be “globally exclusive,” which indicates that all less severe remedies (remedy severity can be defined as the highest severity of all of the problems attached to a particular remedy, it being understood that a given remedy can be selected for a plurality of different problems) and problems should be ignored until the meta-application 20 can first resolve this particular remedy. This would be appropriate for remedies that fix fundamental services, since many concurrent problems may actually be side-effects of the failure of the fundamental service and may be resolved simply by resolving the fundamental service issue first. The resolution policy preferably also indicates how to verify whether the remedy actually worked and resolved its associated problem. After reconciling all remedies and their resolution policies with the resolution policies of other currently active problems/remedies, the meta-application 20 preferably submits a list of remedy ID's to execute. Since the meta-application 20 might only have a partial ordering of remedies by “severity,” it may be possible for multiple remedies to be classified as “most important.” In this case, the remedy selector 40 can examine its knowledge base 22 to determine if there are deployment-specific hints (which the meta-application 20 may have generated over time) to select between remedies of otherwise equal severity. At this point the RCA module 41 can be accessed to determine additional sorting measures to apply to the remedies, based on the causal relationships among the rules that triggered and initiated the resolutions. This may provide an unambiguous ordering of resolutions. If there aren't any deployment specific hints to select between remedies of otherwise equal severity, then the meta-application 20 can ask an administrator of the deployment 10 to choose among the remedy options. Alternatively, the remedy selector 40 can be configured to simply randomly choose one of the remedies of substantially equal severity, particularly if they are deemed “non-catastrophic” (if some of the remedies have the potential to bring the system down, then it may be preferred to leave the choice to the administrator). After a selected remedy is executed, the meta-application 20 preferably utilizes a health evaluation algorithm to determine how the remedy affected the health of the deployment 10. If the deployment health does not improve, the remedy selector 40 can simply choose another remedy (or ask the administrator to choose another remedy), and possibly attempt to undo the previously executed remedy and record its utility for the current system state. In this way, the remedy selector 40 can use the health evaluation algorithm to track remedy performance so that the next time the same problem (or a related problem) is detected, the remedy selector 40 will have more context to choose among remedies. After the remedy selector 40 selects a list of possible remedies, their associated remedy ID's are preferably sent to the automation subsystem 32. The automation subsystem 32 is preferably configured to take a high-level remedy and map it to an “abstract” plan in the plan database 28. The planning module 42 preferably then takes the abstract plan and information obtained from the application model 24 to produce a deployment-specific plan composed of low-level actions. This plan can then be displayed to the administrator (via the GUI 29, an email, a web-page, or sent directly to the administrator's network management system as an SNMP trap, etc.) so that the administrator can execute the plan manually. Alternatively, if the administrator wishes, the plan can be sent to the execution engine 44 to be executed in a consistent, reversible manner. Before executing the plan, the execution engine 44 preferably makes sure that other plans do not conflict with this one. During execution, each plan step is preferably a sequence of low-level “operators.” Operators are atomic actions that can be executed against the deployment 10. Each of these actions can be sent to an appropriate monitor 14, which preferably executes the actions against the deployment 10 and reports back as to whether the action succeeded in its intended effect. The execution engine 44 then continues executing plan steps until completion. These actions are intended to change the behavior of the deployment 10, which may in turn change the telemetry metrics that the meta-application 20 monitors. After a plan has been executed, the meta-application 20 preferably attempts to learn whether the plan/remedy worked. Accordingly, the analysis subsystem 30 continues to analyze new telemetry and, based on the telemetry change, may adjust the predicate weights discussed above in “Problem Logic Learning.” If the remedy worked, the features associated with the problem should now disappear, and consequently the problem will not be matched by the Problem Logic circuitry. At this point, the resolution policy associated with the executed remedy is preferably still active, and asks the remedy selector 40 (or other component of the meta-application 20) to determine whether the problem is still active. In response, the remedy selector 40 preferably runs a “resolution verification” procedure (associated with the remedy) to verify closure of the problem, and then deactivates the resolution policy after positive verification. If the problem still persists, the resolution policy remains active and the remedy selector 40 preferably runs a “remedy did not work” procedure to try alternative methods (there may be multiple remedies associated with the problem or it may be appropriate to retry the remedy). If no alternative works, then the meta-application 20 preferably notifies the administrator of the deployment 10, and further processing with respect to this problem ceases until the administrator is able to address the issue. Remedy Selection The resolution policy for a remedy allows the meta-application 20 to more explicitly manage the application control feedback loop to allow remedies to propagate their effects through the deployment 10. A typical resolution policy will mandate that the meta-application 20 wait some N minutes for the remedy to “work”. The meta-application 20 preferably notes “global system health” just before executing the remedy. Global system health is a numeric measure that encapsulates the current state of the application deployment 10 and preferably assesses a combination of application responsiveness, resource robustness, and other factors. During the remedy waiting period, any problems associated with the remedy can be “ignored” (i.e., the remedy selector 40 will not initiate remedy selection) to allow the already existing remedy to attempt to finish. Once the waiting period has lapsed, the meta-application 20 can then check to see if the problem for that remedy still exists. If it does not, the meta-application 20 can run a “check if remedy worked” resolution verification procedure of the remedy's resolution policy. This policy may simply indicate that the problem's non-existence is enough to declare success, or there may be additional verification steps required. If a remedy is deemed successful, the meta-application 20 preferably logs the effect of the remedy on global system health and deletes the resolution policy from the list of currently active resolution policies. As explained above, if a remedy is found to be unsuccessful, the meta-application 20 preferably runs the “remedy did not work” procedure of the resolution policy associated with the remedy. If a remedy associated with a problem has multiple plans, then the resolution policy can try each plan. If none of the plans work, then the meta-application 20 can follow the “remedy did not work” procedure for the last plan. This policy may dictate that the meta-application 20 halt all processing on the problem and notify the administrator of the problem. Or it may ask the administrator how to deal with the failure to resolve the problem (ignore the problem forever, ignore for some time, ignore problem until administrator indicates that a manual resolution has been attempted, etc). Or it may simply retry the plan a certain number of times before giving up and then trying one of the other options if the plan simply continues to fail. The remedy's resolution policy preferably also indicates how the plan interacts with other running plans. The remedy execution can be “globally exclusive,” which indicates that no other remedies may run on any component of the deployment 10 concurrently with this remedy. For a deployment 10 of Microsoft Exchange™, an example of a “globally exclusive” remedy might be one that fixes an unresponsive DNS server; since so many other components are dependent on DNS service, it is important to resolve this remedy first, and it is likely that most other problems will be resolved as well. Also, some remedies may be very sensitive to other simultaneously running activities, and need global exclusion to ensure safe operation. Remedies may also be “locally exclusive,” which indicates that no other remedy may run on the particular component (e.g., a server 12, a disk) that the remedy runs on. In one embodiment, most remedies are “locally exclusive,” since this is how good administrators attack problems (by trying one thing at a time on a server 12). The meta-application 20 may force all remedies into global exclusion if it senses that global system health is deteriorating at an unacceptable rate. In this case, there may be multiple remedies running while the deployment 10 is deteriorating, and it may be desirable for the meta-application 20 to isolate the problematic remedy or remedies by running remedies sequentially rather than simultaneously. The meta-application 20 can direct the automation subsystem 32 to suspend or abort all remedies. If suspending or aborting a remedy is not possible, then the meta-application 20 can wait until the remedy has completely executed and then run remedies in global exclusion mode. Global exclusion will allow the meta-application 20 to clearly determine how each remedy is affecting the deployment 10. When a remedy is selected for execution, there will typically already be a set of remedies and associated resolution policies in effect. Before new remedies are selected for execution, the remedy selector 40 preferably checks all currently active resolution policies to see if their problems have disappeared. If they have, the “check if remedy worked” procedure can be run. Then the remedy selector 40 can select a new remedy and reconcile its resolution policy with pre-existing, currently active resolution policies. If the new remedy has a resolution policy of global exclusion, then currently executing remedies can be told to suspend or abort themselves. Alternatively, if the new remedy has a resolution policy of global exclusion, then the meta-application may be configured to allow currently executing remedies to be completed before executing the new remedy. If the execution policy of the new remedy is local exclusion, then any remedies running on the component that is affected by the new remedy will be suspended or aborted, or alternatively those running remedies will be permitted to finish before the new remedy is executed on that component. With local exclusion, remedy selection can continue for each component that has not had a remedy selected yet. After all remedies have been selected, the new remedies are run. New telemetry comes into the analysis subsystem 30 and generates new features and problems. Then remedy selection begins again. For each new problem, the remedy selector 40 preferably determines whether it is already associated with an active resolution policy and whether the associated remedy is in its waiting period. If it is still waiting, then the remedy selector 40 can ignore the new problem and allow the remedy to complete. If the remedy is past the waiting period and the problem still exists, the remedy did not work, and the aforementioned “remedy did not work” procedure is run. Thus, each cycle of remedy selection is either creating new resolution policies for new problems and remedies or managing currently executing problems and remedies. In this way, the meta-application 20 manages the life-cycle of remedies and is able to manage sets of conflicting problems and remedies by consistently choosing to fix the most important problems first and postponing less important problems. As remedies achieve closure (either fixing their problems or being deemed unsuccessful) they are preferably rated according to how well they affect local health (on the component) and global health (across the application deployment 10). This information is used to inform future remedy selection decisions and may also be used by the “Problem Logic Learning” algorithm to determine predicate weights. The following table shows a few examples of problem-remedy combinations for a meta-application 20 that manages a deployment 10 of Microsoft Exchange™. In this case, the illustrated problems are based on Microsoft™ Knowledge Base articles, identified by MSKB identification numbers. It will be understood there will typically be a large number of such combinations in association with a meta-application 20. MSKB REQUIRED POSSIBLE PROBLEM ID FEATURES PLANS Event ID's 454 327065 Event Feature 454; MoveFilePlan: and 9518 when Event Feature 9518; moves the attempt to mount Various AM queries to streaming file the information locate the information from backup to store database store streaming file correct directory on the Exchange Store.exe threads 267255 Trend feature: CustomPlan: use up available Process.VirtualBytes changes three memory is increasing; registry values on Control chart feature: the misbehaving Process.ThreadCount Exchange server is too high; Event Feature 12800 Messages remain 884996 Event Feature 9003; CustomPlan: in “Messages Event Feature 9004; Reset the location awaiting directory Event Feature 9035; of the archive file; lookup” SMTP Event Feature 6004 CustomPlan: queue in Exchange Turn off message 2003 Server or archiving Plan Execution A plan can be thought of as an abstract remedy that has been converted into a deployment-specific, instantiated sequence of steps and decision factors for executing the remedy. A plan can express a possible solution to a problem, a “best” or sanctioned way to configure the deployment 10, or a commonly performed administrative task. Since a problem can sometimes have more than one possible solution, the meta-application 20 uses remedies, wherein a remedy may comprise a set of plans with a resolution policy, as described above. Plans may require “function arguments” that specify or request more details to complete the plan. For example, a “kill rogue process” remedy needs the server 12 and process ID to execute. Each plan may be associated with multiple problems or remedies, so simply passing the problem information to the plan may not work because the plan would then be responsible for figuring out how to map its arguments from all possible problems. Also, plan mappings to problems may change over time. Thus, plans preferably have a generic argument passing mechanism. Each problem preferably has associated attributes (e.g., metadata such as severity, etc.), and the remedy can preferably determine its function arguments by querying problem variables. This allows any plan to be mapped to any problem through a remedy, but only if the problem has all the variables required for the plan. Since, by definition, the plan and problem are related in the real world, this restriction will more than likely not be onerous. This may require that problems and plans agree on what each variable name represents. For example, if a problem is related to a certain process, the problem preferably uses the same name for the process ID that the plan uses to query for that argument (e.g., “process_id”). As explained above, after the analysis subsystem 30 has identified a problem, the automation subsystem 32 is responsible for corrective actions against the deployment 10. The illustrated automation subsystem 32 includes a planning module 42 and an execution engine 44. In preferred embodiments, the planning module 42 manages, binds, and evaluates plans, and the execution engine 44 actually performs actions on behalf of the planning module 42. In a preferred embodiment of the meta-application 20, plans are graphically represented in the GUI 29 as object trees, wherein each node in the tree defines a step or decision factor in the plan. In a preferred embodiment, a plan object tree comprises the following types of nodes: A scope node is a container-type node, preferably containing data such as arguments, metadata about the problem that the plan attempts to resolve, or the actual Problem Logic formula associated with the problem. A condition node is a decision factor node (i.e., a point in the tree with multiple possible outcomes based on the results of a queried input or data). A condition node can define a branch of the tree based on an expression. An interface node is an action-type node (e.g., a point in the tree in which some action is executed against the deployment 10). An interface node can define an interface to the system, such as an operator or query. In a preferred embodiment, each tree node may contain metadata information that is used to render the tree and describe meaning to an end-user, and dependency and side-effect information used to determine how a plan may conflict with best practices or other currently executing plans. Also, plans may have variables. Variables are used in expressions, to pass parameters and return results from interfaces, and to keep active plan state. Plans can preferably interact with the meta-application 20 through interfaces. A number of different types of interfaces can be provided. For example, a query interface can allow a plan to obtain information from the application model 24. A plan can use an operator interface to a set of operators that define actions to be carried out against the deployment 10. A feedback interface can allow a plan to present questions to a human administrator, the answers to which may be required to continue executing the plan. Runtime interfaces to the planning module 42 can provide general utility functions such as regular expression parsing and notification of plan events. Also, plans can use plan interfaces to invoke child plans. Plans can preferably be executed and/or rendered. Rendering a plan means generating a set of human-readable instructions for an administrator to follow. In preferred embodiments, plan object trees may be transformed during processing. For example, a plan may record or display resolved application model queries, identify deployment-specific branches, etc. Transformations are preferably serialized (e.g., as XML) and stored as blobs in the database. Plan processing can involve the following processes: Selection refers to the process of selecting a plan to invoke, from problem data or other inputs. Activation refers to the processes of instantiating a plan from an abstract plan, binding runtime parameters, checking prerequisites, making the plan deployment-specific, and building plan metadata. Rendering refers to depicting plans to the end-user in a way that allows the end-user to manage plans. Execution means executing a plan against the deployment 10. Finally, retirement means retiring plans that have completed, been skipped, failed, etc. The GUI 29 can preferably inspect all plans at any stage in processing to provide transparency to plan processing to the end-user. In a preferred embodiment (it being understood that alternative plan development processes/steps are possible), plan development involves the following steps: plan instantiation, binding plan parameters, evaluating plan prerequisites, specializing the plan for the deployment 10, and constructing “aggregate shadows” of the plan. These steps can be performed by the planning module 42. These steps are now described. The plan is instantiated from an abstract plan. Instantiation involves generating a unique plan identification or ID. Next, the plan parameters are bound to problem attributes. Binding preferably uses name-matching. Each problem can have a list of name-value pairs that contain attributes of the problem, and each plan can have a list of named parameters. For example, if a problem has name-value pairs “host=foo” and “process_id=123,” the plan would have a list of named parameters “host” and “process_id.” The problems are preferably processed in the problem list order. If the parameter names cannot be resolved by the problem attributes, or if type conversion fails, the plan is preferably retired and an error is returned. Then the prerequisites component of the plan object tree is preferably evaluated. If the prerequisites are not met, the plan is preferably retired with an appropriate resolution. For example, a specific plan might only be applicable if Microsoft Exchange SP2™ or earlier is installed. In traversing and evaluating the prerequisite component of the plan object tree, application model queries may need to be performed, results tested, etc. If the prerequisites are not met, the plan can invoke a runtime interface (e.g., “Plan.PrerequisitesFailed”), in which a textual reason may be provided (this may be invoked multiple times). The text is then aggregated for auditing. If prerequisites are not met, the plan is retired with an error being returned. Specializing the plan for the deployment 10 preferably involves traversing the solution node of the object tree to identify deployment-specific portions of the plan. For example, a specific plan may contain different solutions depending on the version of the application 10 that is installed. If specialization reduces the plan to an empty set (i.e., the plan has no steps), it is retired and an error is returned. A “shadow” is the set of components of the application model 24 that something will affect. An “aggregate shadow” is the union of all parts in a plan, and contains all components affected by the execution of the plan. To evaluate the dependencies and effects of a plan, queries can be performed by the plan. In addition, operators produce effects. This information is represented as shadows, and is used to determine potential conflicts. If the effects of two plans intersect, the plans are potentially mutually exclusive and should not be executed concurrently. If the effects of a plan intersect with the dependencies of a best practice, the plan potentially conflicts with the best practice. This may cause the best practice to be triggered for evaluation after the plan is executed. Shadows represent AM property collections. They allow determining, for example, that a best practice depends on the same property that a plan modifies. This is a hint that the plan may conflict with the best practice, but it does not determine that such is true (e.g., the plan may modify the property within the bounds proscribed by the best practice). As a plan object tree is traversed (e.g., by the automation subsystem 32 or by a human administrator via the GUI 29), the automation subsystem 32 preferably aggregates the rendering metadata from each node. The rendering metadata can be HTML. The GUI 29 can handle “dead branches” (i.e., object tree branches that are inoperable due to inputs received at decision factors of the tree, such as inputs received from the human administrator) by eliminating or identifying them (e.g., “graying out”). The method by which the GUI 29 treats dead branches can be based on user preference. Where variables are unresolved, plan rendering preferably comprises presenting all possible paths. For example, suppose a plan fragment reads as follows: if (useWorkaround) Operator.A( ) Operator.B( ) If the variable “useWorkaround” is found or resolved to be true, then the GUI 29 preferably only renders Operator.A. On the other hand, if “useWorkaround” is unresolved, then the GUI 29 preferably renders the condition and both branches. Unresolved variables can be rendered using their names (or explicit metadata associated with them). For example, consider the following plan fragment: Operator.RestartService (server, “SMTP”) If the variable “server” resolved to “NYC_PDC,” then this plan fragment can be rendered as “Restart SMTP on NYC_PDC.” If “server” were unresolved, it can be rendered as “Restart SMTP on server.” In a preferred embodiment, the automation subsystem 32 includes separate “evaluation” and “execution” modes for traversing a plan object tree. The mode affects how the interface nodes are processed. Evaluation mode is used during plan activation and rendering. In this mode, query interfaces and runtime interfaces are executed, but operator interfaces are only used to produce rendering and shadow metadata. In other words, when in evaluation mode, the plan is not executed against the deployment 10. In execution mode, operators are invoked. Also, in execution mode, the queries can be re-invoked and the results can be compared against those obtained during evaluation. Plan traversal produces context (i.e., variables are resolved, queried information is obtained, etc.) that can be serialized with the plan. This allows plans to be queued, awaiting some action, and later dequeued for additional processing. For example, a rendering agent (which can reside in the automation subsystem 32 or elsewhere within the meta-application 20) may queue a plan that requires feedback from a user. When the user eventually provides the required feedback, the agent can dequeue the plan, resolve the result variable of the feedback interface, and continue the plan. In some situations and embodiments, it is possible for a problem to not have an actionable remedy (either because the problem is not linked to a remedy or because all applicable remedies have failed to correct the problem). Also, a partially triggered logic rule may in some cases suggest that something is potentially wrong with the deployment 10, but a remedy is not available until the rule is fully matched by Problem Logic. Another possibility is that many problems, some with the same severity, might be triggered at once. In these cases, the analysis subsystem 30 can be configured to perform root cause analysis to determine the actual cause of these problems (either automatically or when prompted by an administrator). The root cause analysis module 41 (FIG. 1) is preferably configured to test appropriate components of the deployment 10 to attempt to determine which component is the actual root cause of the problem or set of problems, and which problems are caused by this problematic component. Root cause analysis is the process of analyzing and testing various components of the deployment 10 to determine (1) which component is actually causing a problem, and (2) what other problems are caused by the same misbehaving component. The root cause analysis module 41 can include algorithms that rely upon the application model 24. As explained above, the application model 24 preferably represents the various objects of the deployment 10, directed dependency relationships between the objects, and a set of troubleshooting “unit tests” for each type of object. A unit test is a test of one specific feature or element of functionality. For example, one particular unit test might send a simple email to assess whether a specific server is able to forward or store email messages. As used herein, a “root cause” is specific physical data on a specific physical machine, the data not being caused by any other specific physical data on any machine. The curing of a root cause leads expeditiously to the cure of some or all extant abnormal conditions in the deployed application managed by the meta-application 20. The root cause analysis module 41 is preferably configured to iteratively use pattern recognition methods on the application model 24 and diagnostic unit tests to further isolate causes, including root causes, of problems existing in the application deployment 10 managed by the meta-application 20. Value of Root Cause Analysis The root cause analysis module 41 complements the Problem Logic algorithm by (i) finding causes of problems when Problem Logic lacks the knowledge to find the causes more directly, and (ii) isolating the root causes of problems when Problem Logic finds no causes, finds too many causes, or finds the wrong cause. Problem Logic is limited by the knowledge that is encoded into it (i.e., the knowledge in the knowledge base 22). Root cause analysis can circumvent insufficient specific knowledge and add to what Problem Logic can do by diagnosing problems using general pattern recognition principles on the application model 24. The root cause analysis module 41 partly fills in where Problem Logic knowledge is missing and where Problem Logic can use additional guidance. If Problem Logic does not match any rules, but a problem exists, the root cause analysis module 41 can preferably detect problems that Problem Logic does not find by marking application model objects associated with partially triggered rules and applying root cause analysis strategies. If multiple Problem Logic rules trigger simultaneously, the root cause analysis module 41 can preferably determine which problems are causing other problems. For example, in a meta-application 20 that manages a deployment 10 of Microsoft Exchange™, suppose the root cause analysis module 41 uses causal link information stored in the application model 24 to detect the following three problems: (1) SMTP service has stopped, (2) email has stopped, and (3) email is slow. Logically, the stoppage of SMTP service has likely caused the stoppage of email, which is the likely cause of the detection of slow email. If the root cause is that SMTP service has stopped, remedies specific to the problem of slow email are not worth trying until remedies for the stopped SMTP service are successful. Therefore, the root cause analysis module's pattern recognition determination of root causes and diagnostic unit testing can narrow sets of Problem Logic problems to be considered for immediate remedy execution and can prioritize remedies. If a Problem Logic rule triggers, but Problem Logic does not offer any remedies, the root cause analysis module 41 can preferably discover curable root causes. The objects associated with the corresponding matched problem can be marked on the application model 24 and the root cause analysis module 41 can then identify and diagnose the causes of the deployment problem. If a Problem Logic rule triggers, but an associated remedy fails to cure the problem, the root cause analysis module 41 can preferably discover other possible remedies. FIGS. 23 and 24, for example, illustrate how root cause analysis can implicate “bystander” problem objects in the application model 24, which Problem Logic may not have detected (FIGS. 23 and 24 are described below). The root cause analysis module 41 preferably conducts diagnostic unit tests and remedies on these objects, the unit tests and remedies being preferably stored in the application model 24 in association with the objects. Therefore, these root cause analysis actions may solve problems that Problem Logic would give up on. Causes and Root Causes For a meta-application 20, one operationally useful definition of cause, suitable for investigation, requires that a cause be discoverable, a relatively permanent record (i.e., preferably not an extremely transitory state or human participant), curable, and optionally time-stamped. A timestamp can be precise (e.g., file creation date, log file entry time, etc.), coarse (e.g., occurred after a prior Windows™ registry backup time), or nonexistent. A cause, in the context of a meta-application 20, typically comprises specific physical data on a specific physical machine. A cause might be a bad binary, setting, file, installation, or anomalous data. Less common causes might be a service state (e.g., a service was never started), performance limit, and resource limit. For example, in the case of a meta-application 20 that manages a deployment 10 of Microsoft Exchange™, causes can arise from software bug/design, installation, permissions/security, other software, data peculiarity, networking configuration, other configuration, Active Directory, service, Metabase/MSIE, Registry, performance limit, files, hardware, and viruses or worms. A root cause is a main cause. This means, particularly, that a root cause has no antecedent cause in any chain of causally linked causes. If a root cause is remedied, there is no reason for it to quickly reappear, because such a reason would be an upstream cause (i.e., upstream in the causality chain). On the other hand, remedied ordinary causes could reappear because upstream generating causes remain unremedied. A root cause is not necessarily an original cause, for the reason that original causes often are not discoverable. What is desirable is that a root cause be a main cause, which, if cured, leads expeditiously to the cure of a plurality (preferably all) of extant abnormal conditions in the deployment 10 managed by the meta-application 20. Root Cause Analysis Algorithm This section describes a preferred algorithm conducted by the root cause analysis module 41 to perform root cause analysis. As discussed above, the meta-application 20 preferably has an internalized description of the application deployment 10, referred to herein as the application model 24. A preferred approach to root cause analysis discerns root causes by examining the state of the application model 24. In a preferred embodiment, the application model 24 comprises a labeled, directed graph that includes representations of all significant deployment objects that might be implicated or affected by a problem or set of problems, including causes and root causes. Classes of objects within the application model 24 can provide diagnostic unit tests and remedies as methods that can be applied to the actual objects in the deployment 10, generally at some cost (e.g., time, space, risk, temporary loss of service, or required human assistance). Preferably, the objects in the application model 24 themselves provide history logs, dependencies, and causal links as data members. The application model 24 provides a number of functionalities to the meta-application 20, preferably including (i) consistency, (ii) sharing, (iii) transparency, (iv) archival, and (v) database functionalities. With regard to consistency, the application model 24 preferably enforces a consistent view among Problem Logic rules, such that the application model reduces the possibility of contradictory assumptions made by the meta-application 20. Also, the Problem Logic rules preferably “speak the same language.” Regarding sharing, the application model 24 reduces duplication of deployment 10 information, by maintaining a centralized, dynamically updating repository of such information. With regard to transparency, the application model 24 provides a concentrated data structure that permits easier understanding of the application deployment 10, compared to more diffusely spread out procedural knowledge. Other components of the meta-application 20 preferably have visibility into the application model 24 and can traverse its data structure. Regarding archival, the application model 24 can preferably be backed up. Recordation of the history of the application deployment state can provide numerous benefits. Finally, powerful, unpredictable queries can be run against the application model 24 as a database. Thus, preferred root cause analysis algorithms use the application model 24 as a tool to find causes and root causes. In the preferred embodiment, an approach to root cause analysis involves iterated pattern recognition within the application model 24 to identify potential causes and root causes, and applying diagnostic unit tests to further isolate causes, including root causes, of problems existing in the deployment 10. In this general approach, application model images of root causes are identifiable as characteristic substructures of the application model data structure. One particular root cause analysis algorithm is the following: Root Cause Analysis Algorithm: while (true) { Mark anomalous objects on the application model 24; Use pattern-recognition to identify causes and candidate root causes on the marked application model 24; Apply diagnostic unit tests on candidate root cause objects; Report or remedy root cause objects; A root cause analysis algorithm, such as the one above, can be called as a subroutine by the overall orchestration module 21 of the meta-application 20. For example: Orchestration Algorithm: while (true) { if (Problem Logic can do processing) { Call Problem Logic; } else if (Root Cause Analysis can do processing) { Call Root Cause Analysis; Other processing; Since the Problem Logic algorithm provides very domain-specific and especially effective knowledge for quickly remedying application deployment problems, the orchestration module 21 preferably calls Problem Logic first when investigating anomalous events. In cases where Problem Logic is unable to provide actionable information relating to problems, the orchestration module 21 preferably calls a suitable root cause analysis algorithm. Since the preferred root cause analysis algorithm relies on very general pattern recognition, search, and diagnostic unit testing, it is advantageously used when Problem Logic is unable to remedy a problem. An initial step in the preferred root cause analysis algorithm is to mark anomalous objects on the application model 24. One method of marking anomalous objects involves identifying objects implicated by Problem Logic activities. For example, objects that are bound to variables in either partially or completely triggered rules can be marked. Another method of marking anomalous objects involves modeling. For example, mathematical modeling and baselining of deployment 10 objects can identify anomalies even if no Problem Logic rules are actively operating on such objects. Skilled artisans will recognize that a variety of other methods can alternatively or additionally be used to mark anomalous objects of the application model 24. Marked objects are sometimes referred to herein as “problem objects” or “unhealthy objects.” After problem objects are “marked” on the application model 24, a following step of the preferred root cause analysis algorithm is to use pattern recognition to identify causes and candidate root causes on the marked application model. A variety of different strategies can be employed to find causes and root causes. Some of these strategies are now described. Skilled artisans will appreciate that the techniques described below are not exhaustive, and other approaches may be available. One pattern-recognition technique, “configuration analysis,” looks for recent property changes of marked objects of the application model 24. A related technique is to look for recent local configuration changes of objects that are “near” the marked objects. For example, FIG. 27 shows four identical application model objects 220, 222, 224, and 226. Suppose the object 226 is marked as having a problem. Comparing the configuration of the problem object 226 to all three healthy objects 220, 222, and 224, the standout dissimilarity is the small square 228 in the lower right corner. This square 228 is filled in the problem object 226 and unfilled in the healthy objects 220, 222, and 224. For example, the square 228 may represent a backed up mail queue or a disk space that is over quota. Therefore, the square 228 can be identified as a root cause candidate. Another pattern-recognition technique, “cluster analysis,” involves grouping marked objects that are near each other in the application model 24 into clusters, such as by a k-means cluster analysis algorithm (k-means clustering is known in the art). Within a cluster, a prime suspect for a root cause candidate can be identified by suitable, plausible criteria, such as by considering causal links, dependencies, temporality, application model topology, and diagnostic unit tests. Appropriate cluster analysis dimensions include numerical measurements such as performance counters, math model statistics, link distance in the application model 24, object similarity measures, and time. Further details concerning this “clustering” approach are disclosed in U.S. Provisional Patent Application No. 60/638,006, particularly on pages 70-73 and Appendix A thereof. Another pattern-recognition technique, “link analysis,” involves investigating incriminating links or other information relating objects in the application model 24. FIG. 23 illustrates an example, involving unhealthy objects 260, 262, 264, and 266. The object 260 has directed links to the other three objects. Further, there are no unhealthy objects that have directed links to the object 260 (in FIG. 23, this condition is represented by showing an unhealthy object with a directed link in a dotted line to the object 260, and by showing an “X” on the dotted line). Since the object 260 points to other unhealthy objects, but has no unhealthy objects pointing to it, the object 260 is preferably flagged a root cause candidate. FIG. 26 illustrates another example, involving application model objects 230, 232, 234, 236, 238, and 240. In this example, an arrow extending from a first object to a second object with a “d” label means that the first object depends on the second object. For example, the first object may be a component of the second object, which means that the first object depends on the second object. Diagnostic unit tests can be applied to the application model objects in the “neighborhood” (i.e., nearby in the application model 24 representation of the deployment 10) of a detected problem. Suppose the objects 230 and 232 fail their unit tests (in FIGS. 23-26, the failure of a unit test is denoted by a darkened circle, and the passing of a unit test is denoted by an unfilled circle), and the objects 234, 236, 238, and 240 pass their unit tests. The failed object 230 depends on the failed object 232. Since the failed object 232 does not depend on any other failed object, the object 232 is preferably flagged as a root cause candidate. Another pattern-recognition technique, “self comparison,” involves comparing parts of the application model 24 to other parts of the application model. The differences between healthy parts and unhealthy parts that do not show up as differences between different healthy parts are identified as causes. For example, suppose a comparison between an unhealthy object and a healthy object reveals different IP addresses and different DNS settings. Suppose also that a comparison between two healthy objects reveals different IP addresses and the same DNS setting, which happens to be different than the DNS setting on the unhealthy object. The IP address of the unhealthy object should not be considered a root cause candidate, because different healthy objects have different IP addresses. However, the anomalous DNS setting of the unhealthy object can be flagged as a root cause candidate because different healthy objects have the same DNS setting, which is different than the DNS setting of the unhealthy object. FIG. 27 (discussed above) also illustrates this approach. Another pattern-recognition technique, “temporal comparison,” is also exemplified by FIG. 27. This involves comparing the current state of the application model 24 and a previous state, to ascertain temporal differences. Another pattern-recognition technique, “bystander analysis,” involves investigating “bystander” objects. Ostensibly healthy objects (as determined, for example, by conducting successful unit tests) that are adjacent to or near a number of unhealthy objects are treated with suspicion. If an ostensibly healthy object has a common type of link (not necessarily a dependency link) to all of the unhealthy objects, and if similar healthy objects are not linked to the unhealthy objects, then the first healthy object should be investigated. For example, FIG. 24 shows a healthy object 242 having directed links to unhealthy objects 244 and 246. Suppose that there are no unhealthy objects having directed links to the objects 244 and 246. In this case, the object 242 can be flagged as a root cause candidate because it is linked with multiple unhealthy objects that have no unhealthy objects linked to them. FIG. 25 shows another example, involving ostensibly healthy objects 248, 252, 254, and 258, and unhealthy objects 250 and 256. The object 248 has directed links to objects 250 and 256. The object 252 has directed links to objects 250, 256, and 254. The object 258 has no links to the other illustrated objects. Observe that multiple ostensibly healthy objects (objects 248 and 252) point to the same unhealthy objects 250 and 256. However, since the object 248 points only to unhealthy objects, it is the preferred root cause candidate, in contrast to the object 252 that points to both unhealthy and healthy objects. Once pattern-recognition techniques are used to identify root cause candidates, a following step in the preferred root cause analysis algorithm is to conduct increased diagnostics, troubleshooting, or remedies with respect to objects appearing in or intersecting with root cause candidate structures. Diagnostic unit tests are preferably first attempted on the root causes. If this does not resolve a problem, then diagnostic unit tests are preferably applied on non-root causes. The results are preferably fed back into the application model 24. For example, test results of the diagnostic unit tests can be cached in the history logs of the application model objects to minimize duplicate testing. Then, the root cause analysis algorithm loop is repeated. This can be done in a well-founded way to guarantee termination if necessary. In other words, the algorithm can contain some criteria for stopping. However, it is also sufficient that the root cause analysis algorithm loop act as a perpetual ongoing process, provided that there is sufficient guarantee that the algorithm can keep up with all the work that is supplied to it (and which it may generate for itself). Diagnostic unit tests for candidate root cause objects are provided as methods of the application model object classes corresponding to the suspect objects. The diagnostic unit tests can comprise diagnostic troubleshooting methodologies (as described above in the “Encoding Diagnostic Methodologies” subsection of the “Encoding Knowledge” section) or other appropriate specific diagnostic tests (e.g., executables, tests provided by the maker of the managed application 10, meta-application shims, etc.) that provide useful output. The diagnostic unit tests preferably narrow down suspect object lists, drill down into component objects, chase causes backwards, identify new suspect objects to consider, etc. In addition to these approaches, diagnostic unit tests can possibly request additional telemetry that causes new feature information to be fed into Problem Logic for further consideration by the meta-application 20. Once these increased diagnostics, troubleshooting, or remedies are conducted with respect to the root cause candidate objects, a following step in the preferred root cause analysis algorithm is to report or remedy the root cause objects. Root cause analysis identifies root cause objects in the application deployment 10 through inspection of the marked topology of the application model 24 and drill down unit diagnostic testing of suspect candidate root cause objects. Root cause analysis can lead to a positive outcome in several ways. First, identifying candidate root causes leads directly to the possibility of the RCA module 41 applying problem object class remedies to the problem objects that have been identified as root causes. Second, the root cause analysis processing, through the diagnostic unit testing, may stimulate useful new feature information that will feed into Problem Logic, trigger Problem Logic rules, and resolve problems by the Problem Logic mechanism described above. Third, even if no remedy is found for some problems, root cause analysis can nevertheless provide valuable insight to a human administrator through the GUI 29. In such an “open loop,” the administrator and the meta-application 20 can cooperate to semi-automatically diagnose and resolve problems by focusing on the menus of possible problem objects that the RCA module 41 reports. Remedy outcomes (success or failure) can be stored in the history logs of the application model objects, to prevent repeated execution of remedies that have already been attempted and also to influence future repairs of identical or similar problems. Likewise, aggregate statistical information is propagated to static data members of the involved problem object classes. An additional functional role for root cause analysis can be to further enhance the structured causality determination capabilities of Problem Logic. As successes are found during this less structured augmentation to causality determination, the knowledge of the causality can be encoded, manually or automatically, back into Problem Logic. Further, statistics on application model objects related to root causality can be tabulated for future reference by other modules and/or end users. Encoding Knowledge Encoding Goals The Problem Logic encoding preferably includes encoding for logic rules and an encoding format for predicates. The predicate information in the encoding is used for problem detection purposes, but may also include data that is important for feature detection and implementing queries of the application model 24. A preferred knowledge encoding methodology includes one or more of a number of advantageous aspects, such as the following: The encoding is preferably expressive enough to represent any possible, valid rule. The encoding can preferably naturally represent metadata associated with rule components. The encoding is preferably extensible in a backward-compatible way, to avoid having to recode all the logic rules if the encoding format is extended. The encoding preferably facilitates easy validation (preferably directly in an editing tool used to create or modify the encoding), so that an encoder can analyze an encoded rule or set of rules without actually running them through the meta-application 20 (e.g., spelling checks, basic sanity checks, predicate validity, rule triggerability, etc.). The encoding format preferably facilitates relatively easy encoding once the encoder understands the logic of a rule. In other words, the encoding should not require the encoder to prepare a complicated translation to the encoding format—it should be “natural.” Also, predicates are preferably relatively easy to add (especially those that simply comprise queries for information about the deployment 10). Preferably, “super-encoders” can add predicates in a manner that allows other encoders to simply use them. In a sense, this provides a macro-capability to create simple predicates with complex underlying implementations that can be coded without the need to recompile the meta-application 20. It will be understood that knowledge can be encoded from a large variety of different types of knowledge sources, including knowledge base articles, books, other text documents, information obtained from domain experts, orally received knowledge, and the like. Encoding Language Formats The encoding can be done in any suitable language. Two possible approaches for encoding the symptom logic are a “prolog-like” format and an XML format. The prolog approach has the advantage that it is easier to translate from an abstract logical understanding of a rule to a prolog rule, but only for encoders familiar with prolog. A disadvantage of prolog is that it may require a custom language (i.e., an extension of prolog) and custom tools to enter, edit, validate, and parse the language. The XML approach has the advantage that there is already a standard (XML Schema) to describe significant parts of the Problem Logic rule XML format, and excellent pre-existing XML tools can be used to facilitate entry, editing, validation, and parsing. XML also allows for backwardly compatible extension and for adding new data to any rule component. A possible disadvantage of XML is that it takes some extra effort to translate abstract logical understanding into the XML format, unless one is very familiar with XML and the Problem Logic XML format. A hybrid approach would be to enter rules in a prolog-like language which is then translated to the XML format (in which it is easier to do normal editing, metadata editing, validation, and parsing). In either approach, once the encoding is parsed, the output is preferably an identical parse tree, and all downstream components of the encoded knowledge are preferably completely unaware of how the knowledge was originally encoded. Encoded knowledge, such as the knowledge stored in the knowledge base 22, can come from a variety of sources. Two important sources of knowledge are knowledge base articles and recommended diagnostic procedures extracted from human experts. These types of knowledge can be encoded manually or automatically. Manual and automated encoding methods are described below. Encoding Process The following is one possible procedure by which encoders can generate logic rules from knowledge sources. This description is provided in the context of encoding knowledge derived from knowledge base articles, such as Microsoft™ Knowledge Base articles. However, aspects of this procedure can also be used for encoding diagnostic methods, which are more fully described in the next subsection of this application. Also, while the following description is provided in the context of using XML as a programming language, it will be appreciated that other programming languages can be used. Skilled artisans will also understand that the encoding process can encompass additional or fewer steps than set forth below, and that the following represents only one embodiment. Some of the steps in this procedure can be partially or fully automated within software. In a first step, the encoder preferably reads the knowledge base article or other knowledge source text in order to understand the problem and how it may be programmatically identified. This may entail identifying application model objects and telemetry predicates (if any) associated with the article. The encoder may need to review a resolution section of the article to fully identify all the components required for identification of the particular problem. The encoder may also need to run administrative tools that are referenced in the article (or related to things in the article) to learn about which objects of the application model 24 are involved, as well as the objects' relevant properties. In a next step, the encoder preferably identifies or generates a query that will locate all relevant objects of the application model 24. This step produces application model query predicates that can be encoded in the rule. Some queries may be so common (in other Problem Logic rules) that there may already be a predicate created for it, which can be used as a shortcut. In a next step, if it is necessary to insert a telemetry predicate into the rule, the encoder can find the correct predicate from a predicate list in the XML Schema (see “Application Model” section above). The encoder should check the argument types in the XML Schema of the predicate to determine whether it has all the required application model objects. If not, then the encoder can use the application model objects in hand to find the query that will obtain the other correct application model objects (through various relationships, such as parent-child, dependency, and others). In a next step, the encoder preferably identifies the logic of the rule and encodes the rule using all the predicates identified in previous steps and the logical connectives described above, including but not limited to AND, OR, and THEN. In a next step, the encoder assigns “contribution” values to each of the predicates of the rule. In one embodiment, predicates generally have a contribution of “very high” (or the like), meaning that the predicate is very important and its absence/existence should significantly lower/increase the confidence that the rule is triggered (the exact effect depends on the logic of the rule). However, there are some instances in which a predicate is obviously less important, usually because a knowledge base article uses language like “may” or “could be affected by,” or the article is very vague about the importance of a particular component. If the encoder is unclear about the role of a predicate in the rule, it is best to seek clarification from an expert associated with the managed application 10. As explained above, the contribution value can intuitively be thought of as a metric that slightly modifies the behavior of an AND gate, so that a “minor” input to the AND gate does not adversely affect the confidence of a rule (by making it too low) if the input is false. Similarly, if a minor input to an OR gate is true, in some cases it should be given a low contribution value so that it does not too greatly increase the confidence of a rule. In a next step, the encoder assigns “need” values or attributes to each predicate, which indicate if the predicate is required for the logic of the rule. Intuitively, if a predicate's need value is “required,” then a false predicate can “veto” an AND gate and set its output confidence to zero, even if other predicates have non-zero confidences. Conversely, if a predicate has a high confidence and a need value of “required,” it can “favor” an OR gate even if the other predicates have zero confidence. On the other hand, if a predicate's need value is “optional,” then the predicate is essentially not needed. If the optional predicate is false and is an input to an AND gate, then the AND gate will not necessarily have a zero confidence. If an optional predicate is true and is an input to an AND gate, then the AND gate will have a higher confidence. For example, suppose a rule has two telemetry predicates that must be true for the rule to trigger. Suppose further that the rule includes a predicate describing a “user-generated event” that, if true, should increase the rule's confidence, and that, if not true, should not affect the rule's confidence. The desired result can be achieved by setting the need value of the user-generated event to “optional.” By default, predicates should generally have need values of “required” and contribution values of “very high,” which should be changed only when there is a clear need. Once the rule is completely encoded, it can be validated against the XML Schema, which should identify typographical errors and gross syntactic errors. After XML validation, the rule can be validated for logic errors (malformed queries, incorrect triggering sequence, etc.). After these validations, the encoded logic rule is ready to be inserted into the knowledge base 22 of the meta-application 20. XML Encoding As explained above, XML is a preferred encoding language for the logic rules in the knowledge base 22. In a preferred embodiment, the XML encoding is split into two formats: an entry-optimized “authoring” format and a “native” format. The authoring format allows for the use of macros and shortcuts (like embedding simple child tags as attributes on a parent tag or defaulting entire sections of XML so that the encoder does not need to create them, unless the encoders wants to specialize it) to simplify the encoding and to make the encoding more brief. The authoring format provides a layer of abstraction above the native XML that can be changed independently of rules and can insulate rules from structural or best practices changes in rule encoding. The authoring XML can be transformed by XSLT into the native XML, and it is during the transformation process that macros and shortcuts are transformed to the more verbose native format. The native format is preferably optimized to express rules in the most precise way possible to simplify the meta-application's internalization of the rules. The native format more closely resembles the structure needed by Problem Logic. While the native format can be entered and edited by an encoder, in a preferred process the encoder uses the authoring XML format. The encoder preferably very rarely works on the authoring-to-native XSL transforms. Having a transparent look at the parse tree before it goes into the meta-application 20 should also facilitate debugging, since no “extra” transformations will be done in the meta-application 20 and thus be a black box to encoders. Thus, a preferred XML encoding process involves the steps described below. Skilled artisans will understand that the XML encoding process can encompass additional or fewer steps than set forth below, and that the following represents only one embodiment. In a first step, encoders write the rule in authoring format, which should be a concise and easy format to use. Since an XML Schema that defines the authoring format exists, the XML entry tool can be configured to automatically validate the rule as it is authored. The authoring format is preferably specially built to allow the XML Schema to check as much of the validity of a rule as possible, so that new tags are created for each predicate instead of having a single predicate tag. This allows the XML Schema to properly validate each predicate individually. In a next step, the authoring XML is transformed via XSLT into native format. In this step, macros and shortcuts can be expanded. Any transformation that is achievable by XSLT can help simplify authoring XML. XSL provides a convenient and relatively easy mechanism to help simplify authoring XML. For the lightweight macro-like activities of this stage, XSL should be sufficient, with the advantage that encoders can use a simplified format that reduces errors on the authoring side. If XSLT does not provide enough functionality, then additional C++ code can be provided to transform post-XSLT transformed authoring XML into native XML. In a next step, the native XML is fed into the meta-application 20, which internalizes the rule. Preferably, an XML Schema exists to allow the meta-application 20 to validate the native XML at this stage. Then, in a next step, a command line tool can perform additional validations of the rules. For example, the command line tool can verify that a rule has a proper triggering chain, that the queries are well formed, etc. This tool can be used by encoders to ensure that the rule is optimally formed. Further guidance is provided by U.S. Provisional Patent Application No. 60/638,006, which discloses, in Appendix B, (1) exemplary XML Schema and encoded logic rules, and (2) exemplary rule component tags for implementing query predicates. Encoding Diagnostic Methodologies Some sources of knowledge about the managed application 10, such as knowledge base articles and other reference materials, tend to describe problems in an ad hoc manner. For example, a knowledge base article is only relevant if the particular features described in the article are currently present within the deployment 10. If the meta-application 20 finds that a particular logical combination of conditions (i.e., a rule) exists, then the problem is matched and an associated remedy can be identified. However, since knowledge base articles represent isolated knowledge points, rules obtained from knowledge base articles often do not lend themselves to an intelligent organization or hierarchy within Problem Logic. Another limitation of knowledge base articles is that, since they are generally issued by the maker of the software application 10, they are typically not comprehensive. The software maker typically only publishes knowledge base articles when enough customers submit questions or complaints about certain problems. Thus, many types of problems are not described by knowledge base articles. Also, many knowledge base articles are relevant only to specific versions of the software, which may be superseded by a new version shortly after the knowledge base article is released. These limitations can be substantially overcome by encoding diagnostic troubleshooting methods that human experts would use when confronted with one or more anomalous features or problems with the deployment 10. Accordingly, a preferred embodiment of the meta-application 20 employs diagnostic methods that are encoded as rules within the knowledge base 22 and then used by Problem Logic to detect problems within the deployment 10. One embodiment involves constructing separate diagnostic methods that each focus (either exclusively or non-exclusively) on one of the components of the application model 24. This approach offers a more coherent and natural way to detect problems, and it lends itself to a substantially more intelligent organization or hierarchy of rules within Problem Logic. Skilled artisans will appreciate that encoded diagnostic methods can be utilized in addition to other forms of knowledge, such as knowledge base articles, best practices, and the like. A preferred method of encoding diagnostic troubleshooting methodologies involves creating troubleshooting decision trees in the form of computer-implemented flow charts, and then using a tool to programmatically convert the flow charts into encoded knowledge that can be used by the meta-application 20. The following describes a method in accordance with one embodiment. In a first step, one or more individuals with a high level of expertise about an application 10 to be managed by the meta-application 20 (“troubleshooting experts”) create the knowledge to be leveraged. Rules or troubleshooting methodologies are preferably diagrammatically specified in a flowchart-like structure, such that the rules are made up of a network of “decision factors” that have “yes” and “no” paths. Compared to an encoded form (e.g., XML), this diagrammatic representation of the diagnostic method is much more intuitive and easy to review, understand, and check for correctness. In one embodiment, a tool like Visio™ is used with customized plugins to facilitate the knowledge creation and encoding. In this context, each rule is a different navigation of a series of decision factors (i.e., a different combination of yes or no paths following decision factors), ending in a set of remedies/plans. The troubleshooting expert(s) can create separate trees of rules, such that each tree substantially covers one of a plurality of preferably non-overlapping “critical components” of the application model 24. In some embodiments, decision factors can be shared among trees. Also, in some embodiments decision factors can be specified at a high level for each tree creation step. Troubleshooting experts can use these “high-level decision factors,” even if they were created by other troubleshooting experts, to produce a low-level specification of the decision factor, which can be encoded by a knowledge engineer who does not have full expertise about the application 10 (see next paragraph). The low-level specification preferably takes into account the inputs and outputs required for each decision factor in a tree, so that the set of decision factors for a tree will be consistent. In this context, a high-level decision factor comprises a broad, high-level statement of the decision factor, suitable for human consumption. FIG. 41 shows an example of a high-level flowchart that describes a diagnostic troubleshooting method for troubleshooting a component (e.g., a set of related objects) of an application model 24 for a deployment 10 of Microsoft Exchange™. The illustrated flowchart includes decision factors having “yes” and “no” paths. Those of ordinary skill in the art will appreciate that flowcharts such the one shown in FIG. 41 can be provided for a plurality of different objects or groups of objects of the application model 24. Preferably, enough flowcharts like that shown in FIG. 41 are provided so that every object in the application model 24 can be diagnosed or troubleshot by at least one of the flowcharts. Such flowcharts will typically differ depending upon the specific application 10 that is managed. FIG. 42 shows a portion of the flowchart of FIG. 41, magnified for ease of understanding. A next step of the method comprises an intermediate encoding step, wherein the trees or flowcharts are optimized. Knowledge engineers without advanced expertise about the application 10 begin encoding the decision factors simultaneously using a suitable encoding language, thereby producing “low-level decision factors.” Decision factor encoding can be reviewed by encoding experts to ensure quality. Actual implementation information, including additional inputs and outputs, may be required to produce valid rules (i.e., rules that are usable by Problem Logic), and encoders can optimize the decision factors by increasing the sharing of common data. These low-level decision factors may comprise encoded rule-fragments that may apply to various logic rules. However, each low-level decision factor is preferably encoded only once, and then a rule generation tool (see next paragraph) preferably plugs them into the various rules as required, or provides links/references from rules to encoded rule-fragments as necessary for each rule. In this manner, a meta-application 20 can contain an updatable library of low-level decision factors that are available for use as needed by various rules. The encoders can modify the knowledge flowchart (e.g., the Visio™ diagram) by inserting decision factor optimization information. In a typical scenario, each tree is owned by one knowledge engineer who does this. However, the approach preferably allows any given decision factor to be worked on by many knowledge engineers. In a next step, the knowledge rules are generated. Once all the decision factors are encoded and reviewed, a “rule generation tool” can programmatically convert each of the computer-implemented knowledge trees (described above) and the encoded decision factors into a set of rules that completely implement the tree in an encoding language or format that can be used by the meta-application 20. The rule generation tool can have one or more of a variety of additional different functionalities, such as the following: First, since the tree represents knowledge at a high level, the rule generation tool can preferably verify knowledge consistency at a high level. Second, the tool can preferably automatically produce user-readable explanations of each rule based on the tree diagram and metadata in the decision factors. Third, the knowledge trees and the encoded decision factors preferably provide the rule generation tool with enough context to automatically perform many encoding tasks that would otherwise have to be done manually. Fourth, the tool can preferably automatically optimize rule encoding based on the known performance characteristics of the system. For example, the tool can be configured to merge decision factors to improve performance. Normally, this would involve the collaboration of multiple encoders, but the tool can perform the merging itself and thereby allow the encoders to work independently and more quickly. Fifth, the tool can preferably automatically produce rule metadata that can be used by downstream modules (e.g., the problem detector 38) to analyze the rules. In this regard, the tool can preferably specify all the decision factors at a high level so that the root cause analysis module 41 can determine if rules that the meta-application 20 matches are related to each other at a high level. Sixth, the rule can preferably automatically produce test plans and test data to make sure that the meta-application 20 can properly process the encoded knowledge. Once all the rules are generated, they can be used by the meta-application 20. This approach offers a number of advantages. Encoding work can be divided into a number of stages that can be worked on by multiple people simultaneously. Logic decisions are made by troubleshooting experts, who produce an unambiguous tree (e.g., a Visio™ diagram) that can be more efficiently and intuitively analyzed and discussed. The rule generation tool can provide multiple functionalities, as discussed above, to improve the speed and quality of knowledge encoding. Encoding tasks that require global visibility are automated, which allows knowledge engineers to work on small self-contained tasks that can be more easily reviewed. As explained above, the meta-application 20 includes a user interface 29 (FIG. 1), which is preferably a graphical user interface (GUI). As explained above, the GUI 29 provides information to one or more human administrators of the meta-application 20. Such information can comprise, without limitation, a snapshot or overview of the deployment 10 (e.g., servers, processes, etc.), application model discovery processes, current status of deployment servers 12 (e.g., whether the servers 12 are healthy or problematic), detected features, detected problems, predicted future problems (so that the administrator can take some corrective action before the problem manifests itself), recommended corrective actions, currently active plans (including plan object trees), reports on the success or failure of plans, detected root-causes, and the like. The user interface 29 of the meta-application 20 can also or alternatively involve alerting administrators about relevant events through email messages or other notification methods. The user interface 29 can also be accessible over the Internet, such as by a web browser. The meta-application 20 can be configured to leverage the output of other third party applications or operating systems that include functionality for monitoring the software application 10 (herein referred to as “third party monitoring tools”). For example, the GUI 29 can be designed to work seamlessly with MOM (Microsoft Operations Manager™). Thus, the meta-application 20 can function in two modes: “standalone mode” (without leveraging other monitoring applications) and “leveraging mode.” In standalone mode, the meta-application 20 functions substantially as described above. In a preferred embodiment of the leveraging mode, much of the meta-application 20 functions exactly as it would in standalone mode. The meta-application 20 collects telemetry from servers 12 across the network and evaluates the telemetry using feature detection algorithms and logic rules in the knowledge base 22, in order to determine problems and remedies. However, third party monitoring tools can add some additional dimensions to the solution. For example, MOM™ can act as a source of alerts related to Microsoft Exchange™. Through the Exchange™ management pack, MOM™ can determine problems that Exchange™ may be experiencing, primarily through event log notifications which can then be read by the meta-application 20. When a third party monitoring tool generates a new alert, the meta-application 20 can log a corresponding event (e.g., a feature) in the telemetry database 26, which can then be processed in the same way it would be if the meta-application were in standalone mode. Also, the meta-application 20 can use a third party monitoring tool's alerting capabilities to augment basic alerting provided by the meta-application 20 (e.g., email-based alerting). For example, MOM™ can send alerts to various devices, such as pagers, web services, and the like. In embodiments of the leveraging mode, the meta-application 20 can synchronize its event state management with that of a third party monitoring tool. For example, as events in MOM™ are marked as “assigned,” “acknowledged,” or “closed,” that state can be automatically replicated or reflected in the meta-application 20. Similarly, when a change is made to an event in the meta-application 20, that state change can be replicated in a third party monitoring tool. This allows IT users to work in the application of their preference, and have the relevant event state always present. FIG. 20 shows a GUI screen display of one embodiment of a meta-application 20, which manages a deployment 10 of Microsoft Exchange™. The screen conveys various types of information about the deployment 10. The “Environment” pane of the display screen illustrates the components of the deployment 10, as represented within the application model 24. The “Server Status” and “Alarm Status” boxes display summary information about problems (referred to in the screen display as “Root Causes”) that exist or have recently been detected. More detailed information about specific problems is displayed in the “Root Cause” pane. The “Resolution” pane shows a flow diagram of a particular plan that is currently being executed, with each block in the flow diagram corresponding to one step in the plan. The highlighted block represents the step currently being performed. In the illustrated display screen, the highlighted block states “Please enter a working dns ip address.” The step currently being performed is described in the “Current Step” pane. In this example, the current step prompts the user of the meta-application 20 to enter a working DNS IP address, and the user's response to this inquiry dictates the next plan step that will be executed. Some steps within the plan are action steps that, if executed, cause a change in the state of the deployment 10. Typically, the user of the meta-application 20 is provided with instructions for executing each action step via the GUI 29, or is given the option to specify whether the meta-application 20 should execute each such action step. The meta-application 20 can describe actions taken as the result of such action steps in an “Actions Taken” pane, and can also record them in a persistent log. As shown in the screen display of FIG. 21, the GUI 29 can provide detailed information related to detected problems in a “Correlated Symptoms” pane. The GUI 29 can also provide an option for the user to view a knowledge source, such as a knowledge base article, associated with a problem that has been detected. This section describes an example in which a meta-application 20 uses encoded information extracted from a knowledge base article to diagnose and remedy a particular problem in a deployment 10 of Microsoft Exchange™. FIGS. 22A and 22B together show Microsoft™ Knowledge Base Article ID No. 815759. This particular article describes a problem in which public folder hierarchy messages are stuck in outgoing queues in an Exchange™ 2000 server. The article identifies, under the “SYMPTOMS” heading, two particular warning or information messages that may be logged in the application log. The articles also indicates, under the “CAUSE” heading, that the issue may occur when the “Everyone” group is explicitly denied permissions on both of two listed objects. The knowledge base 22 of the meta-application 20 includes a logic rule that describes this problem. The rule includes two inexpensive feature predicates corresponding to the warning log messages, two inexpensive feature predicates describing the denied permissions of the “Everyone” group on the two listed objects, and one more expensive predicate comprising a “unit test” that tests whether email messages can be sent to public folders. The rule's specific logical combination of these predicates depending upon the relationships of the predicates to the problem. However, for simplicity suppose that the rule requires all five predicates to be true (e.g., all five predicates are inputs to an AND gate). The Problem Detector 38 hosts various analysis algorithms, one of which is Problem Logic. Problem Logic has loaded the rule associated with the knowledge base article in FIGS. 22A-B. Once the rule is loaded, Problem Logic analyzes the rule and determines that, in order to evaluate the rule for the given deployment 10, multiple feature detectors need to be started (using the procedure detailed above). Accordingly, Problem Logic initiates these feature detectors, which then notify the appropriate monitors 14 to look for the events and other features of the rule. For purposes of this example, assume that, in a deployment 10 managed by the meta-application 20, the permissions on the public folder are misconfigured, causing the problem described in the article. As a result, the managed application 10 registers the two warning messages in the Exchange™ application log. These new log entries and picked up by a monitor 14 (FIG. 1) and sent to the meta-application 20 server 60 (FIG. 3) as telemetry. The telemetry data becomes stored in the telemetry database 26, and the feature detector 36 interprets the two error log entries as features. So two new “event” features are generated with the correct “event IDs” and other appropriate error information. Problem Logic then receives these two new “event” features and, for each, uses a discrimination network to identify and select all the rules within the knowledge base 22 that contain an “event” feature predicate with the matching “event ID.” One of the identified rules is the rule for the illustrated article. The identified Problem Logic rule(s) that contain these feature predicates react to the fact that these new features have arrived. The Problem Logic beads are advanced and appropriate variables are bound. Now, the other predicates in the identified Problem Logic rules are activated, which means that the two “denied permissions” feature predicates in the rule for the illustrated article are activated. In this case, the permissions on the public folder are verified as being incorrect, as described in the article. Thus, two new features (corresponding to the “denied permissions predicates) are generated and the discrimination network identifies problem logic rules to update. Once again, the problem logic beads are advanced and more variables are bound. Now, in the rule for the illustrated article, the final and more expensive feature predicate is activated. This predicate causes the meta-application 20 to perform a “unit test” to verify that email messages cannot be successfully sent to public folders (i.e., the meta-application tries to send a message). After some time, the final feature predicate triggers. This causes another feature to be generated and passed to Problem Logic. Then the discrimination network identifies Problem Logic rules to update. At this point, the rule for the illustrated article has been matched because all five feature predicates have become “true.” Thus, Problem Logic generates a corresponding problem. If this problem appears alone, it is sent directly to the remedy selector 40. The remedy selector 40 may need to “lock” aspects of the deployment 10 to prevent them from interfering with the resolution of this problem. The remedy selector 40 selects an abstract remedy associated with this problem, and then the planning module 42 instantiates and creates a deployment-specific plan designed to resolve this problem (the remedies and plans are stored as metadata associated with the rule). If this problem appears together with other problems or this problem does not have an associated remedy, the meta-application 20 may activate the root cause analysis module 41 to determine which problems are caused by the same underlying root causes. The knowledge base article shown in FIGS. 22A-B specifies a resolution involving changing certain Active Directory (AD) settings for the “Everyone” user account. To do this, a plan takes one argument whose value was set during Problem Logic evaluation. In this case, the argument is the object of the application model 24 that represents the server that cannot send messages to the public folder server. The logic rules contains metadata necessary to render and execute the plan, such as information used to organize the order of the plans, the arguments required to correctly execute each plan, query elements for obtaining necessary information from the application model 24, and/or the actual plan steps. After a remedy is selected, the planning module 42 constructs a plan including three strings: the name of the AD organization, the name of the AD administrative group, and the name of the AD node that contains the AD objects that need to be fixed. Next, a simple informational model is created for the sub-plans. Finally, the two sub-plans are called to actually change the user permissions on the problematic objects. The GUI 29 renders the plan for presentation to a human administrator, and the administrator can execute the plan. Alternatively, the execution engine 44 can automatically execute the plan on the administrator's behalf. While the plan is executed, the analysis subsystem 30 keeps active the feature predicates of the logic rule used to match this problem, in order to be able to determine when/if the problem gets cured. When all of the features that caused this problem become inactive (no longer are triggered), the problem expires and is considered resolved. If the features remain triggered, this plan is optionally “reversed” and the next possible solution plan is executed. If all possible plans are exhausted, then this fact is reported to the system administrator and he/she notifies the meta-application 20 if/when the problem is ever corrected. As discussed above, if a problem appears together with other problems or a problem does not have an associated remedy, the root cause analysis (RCA) module 41 may be activated to determine which of the problems are caused by the same underlying root causes. The meta-application 20 can then recommend that the problems be addressed in order of causality, and/or can dynamically create a plan to heal the root cause. In this example, mail messages bound for public folders cannot be sent, which causes the outbound message queues to grow steadily as more and more messages bound for a public folder accumulate. This can impact performance and trigger other types of problems that are actually caused by the problem described in the illustrated knowledge base article. Suppose that the above-described clustering pattern recognition approach is used for root cause analysis. In this example, the RCA module 41 groups several other problems together with the problem described in the illustrated knowledge base article. For example, other problems that might potentially appear include those related to excessive storage media use related to growing queues, and/or related to excessive CPU usage as attempts are constantly being made to empty the queues unsuccessfully. The RCA module 41 creates a multidimensional space in which the problems are plotted, in which the dimensions of the space represent aspects such as independent functional flows, connectivity, frequency of connectivity access, uniqueness of identity, time passage, dependence, statistical confidence, and the like. The above-described clustering analysis (e.g., k-means clustering) is then performed. In this case, the axes in the generated multidimensional space include an axis marked with redundant Exchange™ servers, an axis capturing the various components of the Exchange™ application (including the outbound message queue), and an axis representing the physical components of the computer (such as disk and CPU). The RCA module 41 finds that the root problem addressed in this flow and its derivatively caused problems have coordinates close to one another along these axes and identical coordinates along other axes in the space irrelevant to them. These problems are clustered together for further analysis. By analyzing the common attributes of the clustered problems (e.g., common application model components, temporal closeness or earliness, closeness or earliness in functional or data flows, and/or physical/containment closeness), the RCA module identifies two possibilities for the root-cause candidate: the root public folder object (the object with incorrect permissions causing this problem), or the outbound message queues on some of the Exchange™ servers. The RCA module 41 first considers an outbound message queue object as the root-cause candidate, and tests the objects upon which the outbound message queue object depends. These objects are the network interface of the server and the inbound message queue object of the public folder server. The meta-application 20 conducts unit tests for the outbound message queue and the inbound message queue. Suppose both unit tests fail. The RCA module 41 then considers the inbound message queue object as the root-cause candidate and tests the objects upon which the inbound message queue depends. One of these objects is the public folder object. Suppose the public folder's unit test fails. The RCA module 41 now considers the public folder object as the root-cause candidate. Finally, the RCA module 41 tests the objects upon which the public folder object depends. In this example, suppose all of the unit tests for these objects pass. The RCA module 41 then identifies the public folder object as the component at the root cause of the identified problems. At this point, the meta-application 20 reports the groupings of problems, associated root-cause candidate objects, and unit test results to the administrator, so that the administrator can take an appropriate action. Although a meta-application has been disclosed in the context of certain embodiments and examples, it will be understood by those skilled in the art that the invention extends beyond the specifically disclosed embodiments to other alternative embodiments and/or uses and obvious modifications and equivalents thereof. Further, as will be recognized from the foregoing, the disclosed meta-application embodies a multitude of distinct inventions, many of which can be practiced separately and independently of others. Accordingly, the invention is not intended to be limited by the specific disclosures of preferred embodiments herein. 1. A rule stored in a tangible computer-readable memory, the rule adapted to be programmatically applied by a computer to automatically detect occurrences of a particular problem in a deployment of a software application, said rule comprising: a plurality of atomic gates having predicates for detecting occurrences of a plurality of conditions in the deployment of the software application; and a plurality of operator gates configured to detect predefined logical combinations of outputs of the atomic gates to generate a rule output, said rule output indicating whether the problem is currently detected in the deployment; wherein the rule contains a plurality of free logical variables which can be assigned values, the free logical variables configured for use in input pattern matching and output binding substitutions to supply information to a remedy for the problem, each substitution comprising an assignment of a value to a variable; wherein the rule comprises a logic rule expressed in a first order logic language. 2. The rule of claim 1, wherein at least some of the gates are configured to propagate time-of-occurrence information reflective of times that particular conditions are detected by particular predicates, such that the time-of-occurrence information can be used to detect existence of the problem. 3. The rule of claim 1, further comprising queries for telemetry data collected from monitoring of the deployment to evaluate whether particular ones of said conditions exist, the queries being stored in the rule. 4. The rule of claim 1, further comprising different numerical predicate contribution weights given to different ones of said predicates for purposes of differently weighting importance levels of the predicates in evaluating whether the problem exists, the contribution weights being stored in the rule. 5. The rule of claim 1, further comprising different numerical predicate contribution weights given to different ones of said predicates for purposes of differently weighting importance levels of the predicates in computing a confidence that the problem exists, the contribution weights being stored in the rule. 6. The rule of claim 1, wherein at least one of the atomic gates is capable of generating degree-of-match information specifying a degree to which a condition associated with the atomic gate is met, and at least one of the operator gates is configured to propagate the degree-of-match information for use in generating said rule output. 7. The rule of claim 1, further comprising: a metadata attribute designating at least one of the predicates as a required predicate that must detect a match in order for the rule output to indicate presence of the problem; and a metadata attribute designating at least one of the predicates as an optional predicate which need not detect a match for the rule output to indicate presence of the problem, but for which detection of a match increases a likelihood that the rule output will indicate presence of the problem; wherein said metadata attributes are stored in the rule. 8. The rule of claim 1, wherein some of the predicates include metadata attributes indicating whether the predicate is required or optional, the attributes specifying how the rule calculates a confidence in the existence of the problem. 9. The rule of claim 1, further comprising a query to be made to an application model to retrieve deployment information used to check for a particular one of the conditions, the query being stored in the rule, the query adapted to retrieve information from an application model comprising a representation of hardware and software entities of the deployment and dependencies between the entities. 10. The rule of claim 1, wherein the rule is derived from a text document that associates said plurality of conditions with said problem. 11. The rule of claim 10, wherein the text document comprises a knowledge base article created by a vendor of the software application. 12. The rule of claim 1, wherein the rule is derived from a diagnostic method associated with the software application. 13. The rule of claim 12, wherein the diagnostic method applies to a selected set of one or more objects of an application model of the deployment of the software application, the deployment comprising hardware and software entities, the application model comprising a representation of substantially all of a total number hardware and software entities of the deployment and dependencies between the entities. 14. The rule of claim 1, in combination with a meta-application configured to automatically apply said rule to detect occurrences of the problem. 15. The rule of claim 14, wherein said meta-application provides functionality for correcting the problem. 16. The rule of claim 1, wherein the rule can be programmatically used to receive condition confidence values each representing a confidence that a particular one of the conditions is true, the rule including static significance values for the conditions, such that the significance values can be programmatically used to decline to report the problem when (1) one or more of the conditions are found to be true, (2) the true conditions indicate that the problem is currently present in the deployment, and (3) a condition confidence value of at least one of the true conditions does not exceed the significance value of that particular condition. 17. The rule of claim 16, wherein each of the atomic gates is adapted to receive a condition confidence value representing a confidence that a condition associated with the atomic gate is true. 18. The rule of claim 1, further comprising: an attribute designating at least one of the conditions as a required condition; and an attribute designating at least another one of the conditions as an optional condition, such that the rule can be programmatically used to require the required condition for detection of the problem and to not require the optional condition for detection of the problem, wherein the attributes are stored in the rule. 19. The rule of claim 18, further comprising a confidence calculation procedure for calculating a numerical confidence in the existence of the problem, the confidence calculation procedure configured to increase the calculated confidence if the optional condition exists and to decrease the calculated confidence if the optional condition does not exist. 20. The rule of claim 18, further comprising a confidence calculation procedure for calculating a numerical confidence in the existence of the problem, the confidence calculation procedure configured to increase the calculated confidence if the required condition exists and to compute a zero confidence if the required condition does not exist. 21. The rule of claim 1, wherein the rule includes at least one query for new telemetry data from the deployment to obtain a new value of a time-varying state metric of the deployment, and wherein the value obtained via said query can be used in cooperation with the rule to evaluate whether the problem exists, the rule and the query being represented substantially in a logic programming language. 22. The rule of claim 1, wherein the rule includes a query for obtaining state data of the deployment, the query adapted to be made to an application model comprising a representation of hardware and software entities of the deployment and dependencies between the entities, the rule being configured to be used in combination with at least the state data obtained via said query to evaluate whether the problem exists. 23. The rule of claim 22, wherein the query is adapted to be made to an application model comprising a representation of substantially all of a total number of hardware and software entities of the deployment and dependencies between the entities. 24. The rule of claim 1, wherein the free logical variables represent state information of the deployment, and wherein the variables and state information are subject to unification to produce the output-value binding substitutions. 25. The rule of claim 1, wherein the encoded representation comprises an open formula with free logical variables and the pattern matching comprises producing a data structure representing a resultant formula, the resultant formula representing at least a partial satisfaction of the open formula. 26. The rule of claim 1, wherein at least some of the gates include cost calculation procedures for calculating computational costs of obtaining data for evaluating said conditions in the deployment of said software application. 27. The rule of claim 26, wherein the costs can be used to determine an order in which to evaluate the conditions. 28. The rule of claim 1, wherein the free logical variables correspond to state metrics of the deployment. 29. A rule stored in a tangible computer-readable memory, the rule adapted to be programmatically applied by a computer to automatically detect occurrences of a particular problem in a deployment of a software application, said rule comprising: wherein at least some of the gates are configured to propagate time-of-occurrence information reflective of times that particular conditions are detected by particular predicates, such that the time-of-occurrence information can be used to detect existence of the problem. a plurality of atomic gates having predicates for detecting occurrences of a plurality of conditions in the deployment of the software application; a plurality of operator gates configured to detect predefined logical combinations of outputs of the atomic gates to generate a rule output, said rule output indicating whether the problem is currently detected in the deployment; and different numerical predicate contribution weights given to different ones of said predicates for purposes of differently weighting importance levels of the predicates in evaluating whether the problem exists, the contribution weights being stored in the rule; wherein the rule contains a plurality of free logical variables which can be assigned values, the free logical variables configured for use in input pattern matching and output binding substitutions to supply information to a remedy for the problem, each substitution comprising an assignment of a value to a variable. different numerical predicate contribution weights given to different ones of said predicates for purposes of differently weighting importance levels of the predicates in computing a confidence that the problem exists, the contribution weights being stored in the rule; wherein at least one of the atomic gates is capable of generating degree-of-match information specifying a degree to which a condition associated with the atomic gate is met, and at least one of the operator gates is configured to propagate the degree-of-match information for use in generating said rule output. wherein said metadata attributes are stored in the rule; wherein some of the predicates include metadata attributes indicating whether the predicate is required or optional, the attributes specifying how the rule calculates a confidence in the existence of the problem. wherein the rule can be programmatically used to receive condition confidence values each representing a confidence that a particular one of the conditions is true, the rule including static significance values for the conditions, such that the significance values can be programmatically used to decline to report the problem when (1) one or more of the conditions are found to be true, (2) the true conditions indicate that the problem is currently present in the deployment, and (3) a condition confidence value of at least one of the true conditions does not exceed the significance value of that particular condition. a query to be made to an application model to retrieve deployment information used to check for a particular one of the conditions, the query being stored in the rule, the query adapted to retrieve information from an application model comprising a representation of hardware and software entities of the deployment and dependencies between the entities; wherein the rule is derived from a diagnostic method associated with the software application. an attribute designating at least another one of the conditions as an optional condition, such that the rule can be programmatically used to require the required condition for detection of the problem and to not require the optional condition for detection of the problem; wherein the attributes are stored in the rule; at least one query for new telemetry data from the deployment to obtain a new value of a time-varying state metric of the deployment, wherein the value obtained via said query can be used in cooperation with the rule to evaluate whether the problem exists, the rule and the query being represented substantially in a logic programming language; wherein the rule includes a query for obtaining state data of the deployment, the query adapted to be made to an application model comprising a representation of hardware and software entities of the deployment and dependencies between the entities, the rule being configured to be used in combination with at least the state data obtained via said query to evaluate whether the problem exists. wherein at least one of the atomic gates comprises an open formula with free logical variables and the pattern matching comprises producing a data structure representing a resultant formula, the resultant formula representing at least a partial satisfaction of the open formula. wherein at least some of the gates include cost calculation procedures for calculating computational costs of obtaining data for evaluating said conditions in the deployment of said software application. 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__label__wiki	0.674201	0.674201	View from The Hill: Morrison rewards friends, avoids making enemies and announces new ambassadors Posted on June 1, 2019 by particularkev Michelle Grattan, University of Canberra Scott Morrison’s new ministry mixes stability with dashes of innovation, box ticking, and the rewarding of friends. The Prime Minister has maintained his record number of women (seven) in cabinet, and created a new entry to the history books by appointing the first Indigenous cabinet minister, Ken Wyatt, who will become minister for Indigenous Australians. Let’s hope this is not a poisoned chalice for Wyatt, who previously held aged care and Indigenous health in the outer ministry. It is one of the hardest jobs and the expectations and pressures on him from Indigenous people will be enormous. Morrison has highlighted the priority he wants to give to improving program implementation, including and especially the National Disability Insurance Scheme. Rewards for friends Stuart Robert, one of the Morrison friends and supporters promoted in the reshuffle, becomes minister for government services and minister for the NDIS, and is elevated to cabinet. Robert will oversee a new Services Australia agency to “drive greater efficiencies and integration” of service delivery. Addressing senior public servants the other day, Morrison lectured them on the need for “congestion busting” in the bureaucracy. The NDIS has had serious teething problems. Time will show whether Robert, who moves from assistant treasurer, can deliver on improving delivery. He personally has been the centre of political controversies and last year had to pay back about $38,000 for excessive internet use at home. Scott Morrison hails ‘miracle’ as Coalition snatches unexpected victory Ben Morton, a Morrison confidant who travelled with him in the campaign, becomes assistant minister to the prime minister and cabinet, one of those nice “in close” positions that are all about relationships. Greg Hunt, much praised by Morrison during the election, adds to his health job the position of minister assisting the prime minister for the public service and cabinet, which gives him extra access to the PM’s ear. Energy and emissions together In a major move, Morrison has brought together energy and emissions reduction under Angus Taylor. This means Taylor, whose performance as energy minister has been underwhelming, has responsibility for the climate change area as well as continuing to try to achieve lower power prices. The government skated through the election with climate change not having as much electoral bite as expected and high energy prices failing to extract the political toll they might have. But this is going to be a hard policy area in the coming term, as industry will be looking for more investment certainty, and consumers will want better results on prices. Taylor will need to lift his game. As expected and despite Morrison’s commitment during the campaign, Melissa Price is out of environment and out of the cabinet. She’s now in the outer ministry, in defence industry, where she can continue to be neither seen nor heard. As Morrison put it with delicate understatement: “Melissa and I discussed her role and she asked to be given a new challenge and I was happy to give her one”. Senators to New York, Washington Two top level diplomatic jobs make space for appointments to the Senate. Mitch Fifield, who held communications, is off to be United Nations ambassador in New York, and Arthur Sinodinos, who seemed a monty for a cabinet post after his return from sick leave, will replace Joe Hockey in Washington. Morrison said Fifield’s exit was by choice – that he could have stayed in his portfolio. Jim Molan, who unsuccessfully attempted to survive as a senator by appealing for people to vote for him “below the line”, will hope to get the NSW Senate spot; Sarah Henderson, who lost Corangamite, will seek preselection for the Victorian vacancy. Paul Fletcher, with a background in Optus, takes over Fifield’s communications portfolio. A minister for housing The core economic team of Josh Frydenberg in treasury and Mathias Cormann in finance remains, with Michael Sukkar, from the hard right in Victoria, becoming assistant treasurer and housing minister. He will be in charge of implementing the Coalition’s election promise for a deposit guarantee for first home buyers. Alan Tudge keeps population, cities and urban infrastructure while being promoted to cabinet. Notably, responsibility for industrial relations (previously with the now-departed Kelly O’Dwyer), has been handed to Christian Porter, who stays attorney-general and becomes leader of the House. Porter immediately signalled his law-and-order priority in industrial relations: “my initial focus will be on the law enforcement aspects of the portfolio, ensuring adherence with Australia’s industrial relations laws, particularly on building sites across Australia”. Promotions for women Of the females in cabinet Marise Payne, who retains foreign affairs, is the new minister for women, while Michaelia Cash, who was in a heap of trouble last term, has employment, skills, small and family business, gaining employment. As he promised, Morrison has elevated Linda Reynolds, whom he appointed to cabinet in March, to defence, formerly held by Christopher Pyne, who left parliament at the election. This is a huge job for Reynolds, regardless of her background in the military. Alex Hawke, who is close to Morrison, becomes assistant defence minister, and minister for international development and the Pacific. Sussan Ley is back in cabinet after a break, taking the downsized environment portfolio. Anne Ruston is promoted to cabinet, as minister for families and social services. Karen Andrews remains in industry and in cabinet. Victorian senator Jane Hume, with a background in the superannuation industry, becomes an assistant minister in that area; former whip Nola Marino also becomes an assistant minister. Fewer Nationals The Nationals have lost a cabinet position, going from five to four – this results automatically from the change in their ratio within the Coalition – despite the fact they did well at the election. Morrison confirmed that McCormack chose who went into the portfolios the Nationals have. Nationals sources say McCormack pressed for a better deal on portfolios, Liberal sources deny this. Nationals deputy leader Bridget McKenzie has got agriculture (first womanin that job), which means David Littleproud, who previously held agriculture and water resources, ends up with water resources, drought and other bits and pieces. VIDEO: Michelle Grattan on Morrison’s ‘miracle’ election win – and Labor’s leadership search Among those not moving, Peter Dutton stays in home affairs, Dan Tehan in education and Simon Birmingham in trade. Morrison has put his stamp on his team without being radical. Notably, no one was dumped to the backbench. And the chance of an early return for parliament Meanwhile Morrison also hinted he was hoping that, despite the current advice, there was a chance parliament could be brought back before July 1 to pass the tax cuts so the first tranche could be delivered from then. He told his news conference: We are awaiting advice from the [Australian Electoral Commission] as to when the return of writs will be provided. At present they’re saying that’s June 28 and there’s a possibility of that occurring earlier. That presents different opportunities for when [we] might be able to recall parliament. Delivering those tax cuts right on time is something Morrison would really like to do. It’s a fair bet the AEC is being urged strongly to “deliver” those writs early, if it’s humanely possible. Meanwhile on the Labor side, Richard Marles is now assured of becoming deputy leader to Anthony Albanese, after Clare O’Neil – who like Marles is from the Victorian right – said on Sunday she would not contest the deputy leadership. For the fridge door: pm.gov.au Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra Posted in Australia, Liberal Party, National Party, news, Politics, Scott Morrison \| Tagged ambassadors, article, Australia, Coalition, friends, Liberal Party, National Party, news, Politics, rewards, Scott Morrison \| Leave a comment Phubbing (phone snubbing) happens more in the bedroom than when socialising with friends Posted on November 17, 2018 by particularkev Some social situations are more conducive to phubbing than others. Yeslam Al-Saggaf, Charles Sturt University Have you ever been around people who spend more time looking at their phone than they do at you? Then you know what it feels like to be “phubbed” – and you’re probably guilty of doing it yourself. Phubbing is the practice of looking at your phone while in the presence of others. And as smartphones become ever more entwined in the everyday lives of Australians, phubbing has become so common that many people think it’s normal. People phub during work meetings, while socialising with friends at cafés, while having dinner with their family, while attending lectures and even while in bed. But how common is phubbing in Australia? And in what social situations is it most prevalent? To find out, we surveyed 385 people and asked them how often they look at their smartphones while having face-to-face conversations with others. They recorded their answers as: never, rarely, sometimes, often, or all the time. She phubbs me, she phubbs me not: Smartphones could be ruining your love life We’re more likely to phub family than colleagues We found 62% of those surveyed reported looking at their smartphone while having a face-to-face conversation with another person or persons. Gender made no difference to how often someone phubbed. Neither did geography, with people living in the city and the country phubbing equally as often. But younger people phubbed others more frequently than older people. And people phubbed their partners most of all. https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/jpObh/2/ The study also revealed smartphone users phubbed their parents and children more frequently than they phubbed their colleagues at work, clients and customers. These findings suggest a professional attitude towards using the smartphone in the workplace. We phub more in bed than when socialising We found people phubbed each other more when commuting together on public transport, during work coffee or lunch breaks, when in bed with their partners, when travelling together in private transport and when socialising with friends. People were less likely to phub others during meetings, during meal times with family, and during lectures and classes. https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/rCAbg/1/ The importance of actually unplugging on National Day of Unplugging Boredom isn’t the main reason people phub We were interested in finding out whether boredom plays a role in phubbing behaviour so we asked our survey participants to complete an eight-item Boredom Proneness Scale. Sample questions included “I find it hard to entertain myself” and “many things I have to do are repetitive and monotonous.” We found boredom did explain why people phub, but that the influence of boredom is very small. Other factors, such as the “fear of missing out” (FOMO), lack of self-control, and internet addiction may play a more important role in phubbing behaviour. The effect of phubbing depends on the situation Looking at the smartphone while a person is having a face-to-face conversation with another person is a relatively new phenomenon. While it may violate some people’s expectations, it’s no simple task to categorise the behaviour as good or bad. One theory suggests that when people get phubbed they might judge the behaviour according to how important the phubber is to them. For example, phubbing among friends is probably more acceptable than a subordinate phubbing a manager during a work-related meeting. How the smartphone affected an entire generation of kids While that might be good news for the workforce, it’s not great for close relationships. Phubbing partners can make them feel less important and this can decrease the satisfaction with the relationship. In the case of children, especially those at a vulnerable age, phubbing them can make them feel unloved, which can have a detrimental effect on their well-being. Our findings can be used to inform programs, policies and campaigns that aim at addressing the phubbing phenomenon. It’s clear from the research smartphone users are more likely to phub those who are closely related to them than those less close to them. So next time you get phubbed when you are out with someone, take it as a compliment – it could mean they consider you a close friend. The research discussed in this article will be published in the Proceedings of the 2018 International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS). Yeslam Al-Saggaf, Associate Professor, Charles Sturt University Posted in news, Smartphones, Society \| Tagged article, bedroom, friends, news, phone, phubbing, snubbing, socialising \| Leave a comment Company boards are stacked with friends of friends so how can we expect change? Posted on May 7, 2018 by particularkev Sherene Smith, RMIT University Social connections drive board appointments and more than two-thirds of directors in the 200 largest public companies are on the board of multiple companies. So whoever replaces ex-AMP chairwoman Catherine Brenner will likely be drawn from a small pool of people. Brenner resigned after the Financial Services Royal Commission heard AMP had misled regulators, among a number of other scandals. Treasurer Scott Morrison expects more resignations at the Commonwealth Bank following a damning report from the banking regulator. I’ve interviewed directors, as well as looked at data from ongoing surveys of Australia’s top 200 public companies, and found there aren’t a lot of outsiders. There’s no evidence that income management works … so why introduce it? We can see this anecdotally as well. ANZ chairman David Gonski is a mentor to ex-AMP chairwoman Catherine Brenner. Gonski was also chairman of Coca-Cola Amatil when Brenner was appointed to the board in 2008. Meanwhile Brenner’s sister-in-law, Maxine Brenner, sits on the boards of Orica Ltd, Origin Ltd and Qantas Airways. The corporate governance crisis in Australia will not be solved by greater gender diversity on boards or director independence given how many directors sit on multiple boards and how important social connections are to get there. It shows there truly is no diversity or independence on Australian company boards. Board diversity is barely improving Women held just 18.1% of the board seats in ASX100 companies in 2012. This improved marginally to 25.2% by 2015. In 2015, 58% of the directors in the ASX100 (the 100 largest companies on the ASX) and 49% in the ASX200 (the 200 largest) were personally connected to the companies. This means they were either a substantial shareholder, supplier, customer, former executive, founder, adviser or had “a material contract” with the company on which board they served. Having a vested interest in a company can impair a director’s judgment. It may motivate a director to serve their own interests and not look after the best interests of a company and its stakeholders, as seen with the failure of Enron and HIH Australia. Excluding outsiders My interviews with directors suggest that board members are recruited in a fashion that excludes qualified “outsiders”. For instance, one director told me that identifying the most qualified person was not necessarily the focus of recruitment: What was decided was that those of us who were at the board could look at who we knew … I was not comfortable with that process and I fought that process and didn’t win. My preference was that we advertise for appointed members, but the feeling around the table was we would rather have people we know rather than people who come from an ad, and I didn’t get far pushing that change. I felt it was a boys’ club and I wasn’t happy with it. Being honest, it wasn’t casting the net wide enough. When I pressed my interviewees on how they achieved board membership, many reflected on skills, qualification and experience. However, when the interviewees spoke about recruiting new board members the process is unstructured, featuring factors such as “reputation” and “background”. One interviewee said: The background of the candidate is very important so you feel comfortable, or you feel there’s less chance of making a mistake if you choose this person. Experienced shareholders better than independent directors for business My research found that the social identity of candidates is a significant criterion in the selection of Australian company boards. Closed social networks are the primary means of identifying new board members. What attempts there are to increase diversity and independence are narrowly focused on eliminating the “boys’ club” by having more females on boards. This violates discrimination legislation that states recruitment should be open and accessible, based on clear assessment of skills, training and relevant experience. The use of closed networks in the recruitment and selection of board members also creates other problems related to “group think”. Group think creates a situation where board members are more concerned with being a liked and connected member of a particular social group. As a result members will conform to the status quo, which guarantees them membership perks such as highly paid directorship roles. A direct outcome of the group think mentality are boards signing off on questionable business practices as we currently see in the banking sector. Coupled with a self-regulated system this is a recipe for disaster. Sherene Smith, PhD student, RMIT University Posted in Australia, economy, news \| Tagged article, Australia, boards, change, company, economy, friends, news, stacked \| Leave a comment Your online privacy depends as much on your friends’ data habits as your own Posted on March 28, 2018 by particularkev Many social media users have been shocked to learn the extent of their digital footprint. Vincent Mitchell, University of Sydney; Andrew Stephen, University of Oxford, and Bernadette Kamleitner, Vienna University of Economics and Business In the aftermath of revelations about the alleged misuse of Facebook user data by Cambridge Analytica, many social media users are educating themselves about their own digital footprint. And some are shocked at the extent of it. Last week, one user took advantage of a Facebook feature that enables you to download all the information the company stores about you. He found his call and SMS history in the data dump – something Facebook says is an opt-in feature for those using Messenger and Facebook Lite on Android. This highlights an issue that we don’t talk about enough when it comes to data privacy: that the security of our data is dependent not only on our own vigilance, but also that of those we interact with. It’s easy for friends to share our data In the past, personal data was either captured in our memories or in physical objects, such as diaries or photo albums. If a friend wanted data about us, they would have to either observe us or ask us for it. That requires effort, or our consent, and focuses on information that is both specific and meaningful. Nowadays, data others hold about us is given away easily. That’s partly because the data apps ask for is largely intangible and invisible, as well as vague rather than specific. We need to talk about the data we give freely of ourselves online and why it’s useful What’s more, it doesn’t seem to take much to get us to give away other people’s data in return for very little, with one study finding 98% of MIT students would give away their friends’ emails when promised free pizza. Other studies have shown that collaborating in folders on cloud services, such as Google Drive, can result in privacy losses that are 39% higher due collaborators installing third-party apps you wouldn’t choose to install yourself. Facebook’s data download tool poses another risk in that once the data is taken out of Facebook it becomes even easier to copy and distribute. This shift from personal to interdependent online privacy reliant on our friends, family and colleagues is a seismic one for the privacy agenda. How much data are we talking about? With more than 3.5 million apps on Google Play alone, the collection of data from our friends via back-door methods is more common than we might think. The back-door opens when you press “accept” to permissions to give access to your contacts when installing an app. WhatsApp might have your contact information even if you aren’t a registered user. Screen Shot at 1pm on 26 March 2018 Then the data harvesting machinery begins its work – often in perpetuity, and without us knowing or understanding what will be done with it. More importantly, our friends never agreed to us giving away their data. And we have a lot of friends’ data to harvest. Explainer: what is differential privacy and how can it protect your data? The average Australian has 234 Facebook friends. Large-scale data collection is easy in an interconnected world when each person who signs up for an app has 234 friends, and each of them has 234 and, so on. That’s how Cambridge Analytica was apparently able to collect information on up to 50 million users, with permission from just 270,000. Add to that the fact that the average person uses nine different apps on a daily basis. Once installed, some of these apps can harvest data on a daily basis without your friends knowing and 70% of apps share it with third parties. 7 in 10 smartphone apps share your data with third-party services We’re more likely to refuse data requests that are specific Around 60% of us never, or only occasionally, review the privacy policy and permissions requested by an app before downloading. And in our own research conducted with a sample of 287 London business students, 96% of participants failed to realise the scope of all the information they were giving away. However, this can be changed by making a data request more specific – for example, by separating out “contacts” from “photos”. When we asked participants if they had the right to give all the data on their phone, 95% said yes. But when they focused on just contacts, this decreased to 80%. We can take this further with a thought experiment. Imagine if an app asked you for your “contacts, including your grandmother’s phone number and your daughter’s photos”. Would you be more likely to say no? The reality of what you are actually giving away in these consent agreements becomes more apparent with a specific request. The silver lining is more vigilance This new reality not only threatens moral codes and friendships, but can cause harm from hidden viruses, malware, spyware or adware. We may also be subject to prosecution as in a recent German case in which a judge ruled that giving away your friend’s data on Whatsapp without their permission was wrong. Australia should strengthen its privacy laws and remove exemptions for politicians Although company policies on privacy can help, these are difficult to police. Facebook’s “platform policy” at the time the Cambridge Analytica data was harvested only allowed the collection of friends’ data to improve the user experience of an app, while preventing it from being sold on or used for advertising. But this puts a huge burden on companies to police, investigate and enforce these policies. It’s a task few can afford, and even a company the size of Facebook failed. The silver lining to the Cambridge Analytica case is that more and more people are recognising that the idea of “free” digital services is an illusion. The price we pay is not only our own privacy, but the privacy of our friends, family and colleagues. Vincent Mitchell, Professor of Marketing, University of Sydney; Andrew Stephen, L’Oréal Professor of Marketing & Associate Dean of Research, University of Oxford, and Bernadette Kamleitner, , Vienna University of Economics and Business Posted in Facebook, Internet, news, social networking \| Tagged article, data, Facebook, friends, news, online, privacy \| Leave a comment How to Loose Friends Posted on June 23, 2016 by particularkev Posted in Instagram, social networking, video \| Tagged friends, Instagram, loose, social networks, video \| Leave a comment Antisocial Social Networking The link below is to an article that takes a look at ‘antisocial’ social networking and social networks. http://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/jun/01/antisocial-networks-social-media-private-thoughts-apps-distance-online-friends-technology Posted in Facebook, social networking, Twitter \| Tagged antisocial, article, Facebook, friends, social networks, Twitter \| Leave a comment Two Indian Christians Languish in Saudi Prison ‘Religious police’ raid apartment; no official charges. LOS ANGELES, March 28 (CDN) — Friends and family of two Indian Christians arrested after a prayer meeting in Saudi Arabia in January have tried in vain to secure their release. The two Christians were incarcerated for attending the prayer meeting with other Indian nationals and accused of converting Muslims to Christianity, though the government has not produced formal charges, sources said. Yohan Nese, 31 and Vasantha Sekhar Vara, 28, were arrested on Jan. 21 when mutaween (religious police) raided an apartment where the two had lingered after attending the prayer meeting. Religious police interrogated and beat them to the point that they suffered injuries, according to sources. During this time, religious police who were cursing at them allegedly tore up and trampled on Bibles and Christian material they had confiscated, said a source who spoke to the men. Authorities asked them how many Christian groups and pastors there are in Saudi Arabia and Riyadh and asked their nationalities. The religious police also put pressure on the two to convert to Islam, according to sources. The next morning, Jan. 22, authorities took the two Christians to the Religious Court in Riyadh. The court sentenced them to 45 days in prison. At 2 p.m., police filed a case at the local civil police station, according to a source who requested anonymity. To date the Christian Indians have been in prison for 67 days. Their family and friends say they still have not been able to obtain a document with official charges but know from the prisoners that the charges are religious in nature, according to the source. At the time of their detention, the Christians were not engaging in religious activities. On Jan. 22, 15 mutaween in civilian clothes came back to the apartment they had raided the previous day, destroyed valuable items and wrote Islamic slogans on the walls with spray paint, the source said. Nese and Vara’s situation in prison is “horrible,” said the source. The two men are cramped in a prison cell with only enough room to stand. “There is no place to even sit,” said the source. “Only two hours a day they are sleeping in shifts. When brother Yohan is sleeping, brother Sekhar needs to stand, and when brother Sekhar wants to sleep, brother Yohan needs to stand. They have been doing this for more than a month. I don’t know how many more days they have to continue this.” Since the arrest, other Christians have been too frightened to meet for prayer. One week after his arrest, Vara was able to use a phone to call his family and pastor in India. His wife, Sandhya Vara, who is expecting their first child in three months, said she has not heard from him since. “There were no Muslims in their prayer meeting, but they are accusing them of converting Muslims into Christians,” she told Compass by phone. “We got married eight months ago, but he’s very far from me now and he’s in very much trouble, and I’m six months pregnant.” She and his pastor in India have communicated numerous times with the Indian embassy but have received no response. “I have been complaining to the Indian embassy,” she said. “They cannot call me or give me any information. There is no help. So many times I informed them and they cannot give any reply and cannot take any action.” Vara had worked in Saudi Arabia for more than seven years. Last summer he came to India and got married, returning on Jan. 9 to his post in Riyadh, where he worked as a supervisor for a catering company. “Vasantha is from my church,” said his pastor in India, Ajay Kumar Jeldi. “He is very God-fearing, good, prayerful, supporting the pastor and working for the youth.” The morning of his arrest, Vara called Pastor Jeldi and told him he planned to go to the evening prayer meeting in Riyadh. After the meeting, Vara, Nese and four other unidentified Christians lingered at the flat where the gathering had taken place. At around 7:30 p.m. two mutaween in plainclothes and one policeman in uniform raided the apartment. On the phone with his pastor back in India, Vara said he was in prison for religious reasons and that he had been pressured to convert to Islam, but that he had refused. “If I have to die for my God, I will die for him here,” he told Pastor Jeldi. “God will help me.” The pastor said that in his sole conversation with him a week after his detention, Vara requested prayers for his release. Typically in Saudi Arabia, a foreign worker’s documents remain with the employers who sponsor them in order for them to work in the country. Saudi employers are typically the only ones who can secure their employees’ release on bail. “Only their sponsors can bring them out,” Pastor Jeldi said. “He has the right to bring him out, and no one else has the right to go and pay the bail or anything. Only the sponsor can have that responsibility.” Since his arrest, Vara’s employer has handed his passport to local authorities and told them he is no longer responsible for him, according to the anonymous source. “He doesn’t want him to work in his company anymore,” said the source. The Saudi “religious police” or Commission to Promote Virtue and Prevent Vice (CPVPV) is a government entity that includes 5,000 field officers and 10,000 employees, along with hundreds of “unofficial” volunteers who take it upon themselves to carry out the CPVPV’s mandate, according to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. “Despite the fact that the CPVPV is not allowed to engage in surveillance, detain individuals for more than 24 hours, arrest individuals without police accompaniment, or carry out any kind of punishment, its members have been accused in recent years of killing, beating, whipping, detaining, and otherwise harassing individuals,” the commission stated. In the raid, authorities confiscated anything of value in the apartment, including two musical keyboards, a guitar, two sound boxes, a sound mixer, four microphones, music stands, power extension boxes, a laptop, mobile phone chargers and a whiteboard. They also confiscated 25 Bibles and other Christian materials, the source said. The other Indian Christians at the apartment escaped. The anonymous source said he has informed the Embassy of India in Riyadh of their arrest numerous times. “I have lost hope in them,” he said, “because the only thing they are always saying is that this is a religious case, so we can’t do anything.” Pastor Jeldi said he thought someone must have complained about the group of Christian Indians who were meeting regularly, causing authorities to act. Nearly 7 million foreigners live and work in Saudi Arabia, of which an estimated 1.5 million are Indian nationals. Human Rights Watch has reported that Saudi Arabia systematically discriminates against migrant workers and has called for the government to “abolish the sponsorship system for migrant workers, in particular the requirement for employer consent to transfer employment and to obtain an exit visa.” According to the U.S. Department of State’s 2010 Report on International Religious Freedom, with rare exception, expatriate workers fear government interference with their private worship. The reasons for this interference can range from the worship service being too loud, having too many people in attendance or that it occurs too often in the same place, according to the report. Riyadh was the stage for another raid and mass arrest of Christians in early October 2010. Arab News and other press reported the arrest of 12 Filipino Christians and a French Catholic priest celebrating mass in a private apartment. There were 150 Filipinos in attendance. The employers of the 12 Christian foreign workers secured their release, and the Philippine embassy negotiated their repatriation. The Catholic priest was also released within days. “Saudi officials do not accept that for members of some religious groups, the practice of religion requires more than an individual or a small group worshipping in private, but includes the need for religious leaders to conduct services in community with others,” stated the State Department’s religious freedom report. “Foreign religious leaders continue to be prohibited from seeking and obtaining visas to enter Saudi Arabia and minister to local religious communities.” Report from Compass Direct News http://www.compassdirect.org Posted in Christianity, India, Islam, Saudi Arabia, USA \| Tagged 2010, abolish, accused, Ajay Kumar Jeldi, allegedly, apartment, arrested, attending, beat, beating, Bibles, chargers, charges, Christian, Christianity, Christians, civil, Commission on International Religious Freedom, Commission to Promote Virtue and Prevent Vice, confiscated, converting, CPVPV, cursing, department, Department of State, detaining, detention, discriminates, document, embassy, employees, engaging, entity, extension boxes, family, field, filed, formal, friends, God-fearing, good, government, groups, guitar, harassing, Human Rights Watch, incarcerated, India, Indian, individuals, injuries, interrogated, Islam, keyboards, killing, languish, laptop, lingered, local, mandate, material, materials, microphones, migrant, mobile phone, music stands, musical, Muslim, muslims, mutaween, nationalities, nationals, obtain, officers, official, pastors, Persecution, police, police station, power, prayer meeting, prayerful, pressure, prison, prisoners, produced, raid, raided, release, religious, Religious Court, Report on International Religious Freedom, Riyadh, Saudi, Saudi Arabia, secure, sentenced, sound boxes, sound mixer, sponsorship, suffered, tore, trampled, tried, unofficial, USA, vain, Vasantha Sekhar, volunteers, whipping, whiteboard, workers, Yohan Nese, youth \| Leave a comment Plinky Prompt: One of My Best Road Trips Posted on November 6, 2010 by particularkev Quite a number of years ago I went on a road trip of sorts with some friends through a number of NSW national parks, including Guy Fawkes River National Park, Oxley Wild Rivers National Park and Cathedral Rocks National Park. If memory serves, there were three cars on the trip. The picture in this post is of Dangar Falls. Posted in Australia, Kevin Matthews, National Parks, New South Wales \| Tagged Australia, best, cars, Cathedral Rocks National Park, Dangar Falls, friends, Guy Fawkes River National Park, memory, National Parks, New South Wales, NSW, Oxley Wild Rivers National Park, picture, Plinky, post, prompt, road trips, serves, sorts, trip \| Leave a comment After Fatwa, Pastor in Pakistan Beaten with Bricks Convert, a former fighter in Afghanistan, had protested Islamic attack. SARGODHA, Pakistan, November 5 (CDN) — Muslim extremists in Islamabad on Monday (Nov. 1) beat with bricks and hockey sticks a Christian clergyman who is the subject of a fatwa demanding his death. The Rev. Dr. Suleman Nasri Khan, a former fighter in Afghanistan before his conversion to Christianity in 2000, suffered a serious head injury, a hairline fracture in his arm and a broken bone in his left ankle in the assault by 10 Muslim extremists; he was able to identify two of them as Allama Atta-Ullah Attari and Allama Masaud Hussain. The attack in Chashma, near Iqbal Town in Islamabad, followed Islamic scholar Allama Nawazish Ali’s Oct. 25th fatwa (religious ruling) to kill Khan, pastor of Power of the Healing God’s Church in the Kalupura area of Gujrat city. A mufti (Islamic scholar) and member of Dawat-e-Islami, which organizes studies of the Quran and Sunnah (sayings and deeds of Muhammad), Ali is authorized to issue fatwas. Khan, 34, had relocated to a rented apartment in Islamabad after fleeing his home in Gujrat because of death threats against him and his family, he said. The fatwa, a religious order to be obeyed by all Muslims, was issued after Khan protested anti-Christian violence in Kalupura last month. Muslim extremists who learned of his conversion had first attacked Khan in 2008 – killing his first child, 3-month old Sana Nasri Khan. He and wife Aster Nasri Khan escaped. “During the Kalupura Christian colony attacks, once again it came into the attention of Muslim men that I was a converted Christian who had recanted Islam, deemed as humiliation of Islam by them,” Khan said. In this week’s attack, Khan also sustained minor rib injuries and several minor cuts and bruises. He said the Muslim radicals pelted him with stones and bricks while others kicked him in the chest and stomach. They also tried to force him to recite Islam’s creed for conversion; he refused. On Monday night (Nov. 1) Khan had gone out to buy milk for a daughter born on July 19 – named after the daughter who was killed in 2008, Sana Nasri Khan – when during the wee hours of the night five unidentified Muslim extremists began kicking and pounding on the door. “When my wife asked who they were, they replied, ‘We have learned that you have disgraced Islam by recanting, therefore we will set your house on fire,” Khan told Compass. “When my wife told them that I was not at home, they left a letter threatening to torch the house and kill my whole family and ordered me to recant Christianity and embrace Islam.” Khan had sold some of his clothes at a pawnshop in order to buy milk for the baby, as he has been financially supporting six Christian families from his congregation who are on a Muslim extremist hit list. Islamic militants have cordoned off parts of Kalupura, patrolling the area to find and kill the families of Allah Rakha Masih, Boota Masih, Khalid Rehmat, Murad Masih Gill, Tariq Murad Gill and Rashid Masih. Often feeding her 5-month-old daughter water mixed with salt and sugar instead of milk or other supplements, Aster Nasri Khan said she was ready to die of starvation for the sake of Jesus and His church. Before her beaten husband was found, she said she had heard from neighbors that some Muslim men had left him unconscious on a roadside, thinking he was dead. The Rev. Arif Masih of Power of the Healing God’s Church in Islamabad told Compass that he was stunned to find Khan unconscious in a pool of blood on the roadside. Saying he couldn’t go to police or a hospital out of fear that Muslims would level apostasy charges against Khan, Masih said he took him to the nearby private clinic of Dr. Naeem Iqbal Masih. Khan received medical treatment there while remaining unconscious for almost four hours, Masih said. Born into a Muslim family, Khan had joined the now-defunct Islamic militant group Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, which later emerged as Jaish-e-Muhammad, fighting with them for eight and half years in Kashmir and Afghanistan. While fighting in Afghanistan’s civil war in 2000, he said, he found a New Testament lying on the battlefield. He immediately threw it away, but a divine voice seemed to be extending an invitation to him, he said. When he later embraced Christ, he began preaching and studying – ending up with a doctorate in biblical theology from Punjab Theological Seminary in Kasur in 2005. Upon learning of the Oct. 25 fatwa against him, Khan immediately left Gujrat for Islamabad, he said. He was living in hiding in Chashma near Iqbal Town when Muslims paid his landlord, Munir Masih, to reveal to them that Khan was living at his house as a tenant, he said. A young Christian whose name is withheld for security reasons informed Khan of the danger on Oct. 29, he said. The young Christian told him that Munir Masih revealed his whereabouts to Allama Atta-Ullah Attari, a member of Dawat-e-Islami. Khan said he confided to Christian friends about the dangers before him, and they devised a plan to hide his family in Bara Koh, a small town near Islamabad. “But as I had sold and spent everything to help out Kalupura Christians,” he said, “I was penniless and therefore failed to move on and rent a house there.” Posted in Afghanistan, Christianity, Islam, Pakistan \| Tagged 2000, 2005, 2008, able, Afghanistan, Allah Rakha Masih, Allama Atta-Ullah Attari, Allama Masaud Hussain, Allama Nawazish Ali, ankle, anti-Christian, apartment, apostasy, area, Arif Masih, arm, assault, Aster Nasri Khan, attack, attacks, attention, authorized, away, baby, Bara Koh, battlefield, beat, beaten, before, began, biblical theology, blood, bone, Boota Masih, born, bricks, broken, bruises, buy, charges, Chashma, chest, child, Christ, Christian, Christianity, Christians, church, city, Civil War, clergyman, clinic, clothes, confided, congregation, conversion, convert, converted, cordoned, creed, cuts, danger, daughter, Dawat-e-Islami, dead, death, deeds, deemed, defunct, demanding, devised, die, disgraced, divine, doctorate, door, Dr, embrace, embraced, emerged, ending, escaped, extending, extremists, failed, families, family, fatwa, fear, feeding, fighter, financially, find, fire, first, fleeing, followed, force, former, found, fracture, friends, group, Gujrat, hairline, Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, head, heard, help, hide, hiding, hit list, hockey, home, hospital, house, humiliation, husband, identify, informed, injuries, injury, instead, invitation, Iqbal Town, Islam, Islamabad, Islamic, issue, issued, Jaish-e-Muhammad, Jesus, joined, Kalupura, Kalupura Christian Colony, Kashmir, Kasur, Khalid Rehmat, kicked, kill, killed, killing, landlord, later, learned, left, letter, level, living, lying, medical, member, men, militants, milk, minor, mixed, move, Mufti, Muhammad, Munir Masih, Murad Masih Gill, Muslim, muslims, Naeem Iqbal Masih, name, nearby, neighbors, New Testament, obeyed, ordered, organizes, paid, Pakistan, parts, Pastor, patrolling, pawnshop, pelted, penniless, Persecution, plan, police, pool, pounding, Power of Healing God's Church, preaching, private, protested, Punjab Theological Seminary, Quran, radicals, Rashid Masih, ready, reasons, recanted, received, recite, refused, religious, relocated, remaining, rent, rented, Rev, reveal, rib, roadside, ruling, sake, salt, Sana Nasri Khan, Sargodha, sayings, scholar, security, seemed, serious, set, small, sold, spent, starvation, sticks, stomack, stones, studies, studying, stunned, subject, suffered, sugar, Suleman Nasri Khan, Sunnah, supplements, supporting, sustained, Tariq Murad Gill, tenant, thinking, threatening, threats, threw, torch, town, treatment, tried, unconscious, unidentified, violence, voice, water, whereabouts, whole, wife, withheld, young \| Leave a comment Church Building in Israel Set Ablaze Unidentified arsonist guts bottom floors of Jerusalem ministry center. ISTANBUL, November 4 (CDN) — An unidentified arsonist in Israel set fire to a Jerusalem church building that has long been a focal point for anti-Christian sentiment in a Jewish ultra-Orthodox-leaning neighborhood, church officials said. On Friday (Oct. 29) shortly before 1 a.m., someone broke the basement windows of the Jerusalem Alliance Church Ministry Center and set fire to its bottom floors. An area resident noticed the fire and called the fire department, which arrived 20 minutes later and found the church basement engulfed in flames. Firefighters extinguished the blaze, ventilated the smoke and left after inspecting the rest of the building, said Jack Sara, senior pastor of the church. Smoke and the noise of the blaze had awakened 10 volunteer workers who were sleeping at the church’s overnight facilities. The volunteers, who were visiting Israel from the United States and Denmark, went to a nearby hospital and were treated for smoke inhalation; they were released several hours later, church leaders said. The church building sustained approximately $85,000 of smoke and fire damage. The fire largely gutted the basement and destroyed recent renovations. Sara said he had difficulty understanding how the arsonist could have carried so much hate; whoever set the fire had to know people were inside the church, he said. “He not only intended to burn a room but to kill people,” Sara said. “Whoever did it intended to kill people.” According to Sara, fire investigators initially said the fire was accidental. Then they shifted and said the fire was arson, only to change back again to their original claim that it was accidental. Although the Israeli press reported that investigators had not formally announced their findings, Sara said investigators told him the fire was “very suspicious.” Contrary to some reports, he insisted that there were no candles lit in the basement when the fire broke out. Sara said his church, which hosts several congregational groups including expatriates and both Arab Christians and Messianic Jews, routinely receives threats. Referring to Orthodox Jews, militant Palestinians and even some Orthodox Christian communities, Sara said he receives hatred “from all sides.” It is not unheard of for ultra-Orthodox extremists to burn churches or Bibles in Israel. Not far from the ministry center is the Narkiss Street Baptist Church. In 2007, the church was damaged in a fire believed to be set by ultra-Orthodox Jews. The church building had been rebuilt on the site of a church facility destroyed 25 years prior by anti-Christian groups. Other recent anti-Christian attacks in Israel have included the bombing of a Messianic Jewish pastor’s home that left his teenage son clinging to life, the disruption of religious services by mobs of protestors and assaults on members of groups deemed “missionaries” by far-right, Orthodox Jews. The Alliance Church building was constructed roughly 100 years ago. Palestine Bible College was founded at the building. In 1948, after Zionist leaders declared the establishment of the State of Israel, the church opened other buildings in the Old City of Jerusalem to serve Arab Christians hampered from attending religious services by newly established political realities. Since 1967, Sara said, the building has been used for many purposes. Sara said his church will host a prayer meeting on Saturday (Nov. 6) to ask for protection of the congregation and for a blessing on its enemies. In a statement provided to the press, Sara said he wanted the church building to be “a beacon of light reflecting God’s love to all people.” “We will continue to serve the Holy Land residents from this place, proclaiming peace and justice for all human beings, declaring God’s love for all of our neighbors, friends and enemies,” he said. Posted in Baptist, Christianity, Denmark, Islam, Israel, Jews, Orthodox, Palestine, USA \| Tagged 1948, 1967, 2007, ablaze, accidental, anti-Christian, Arab, arson, arsonist, assaults, attacks, attending, basement, beacon, Bibles, blessing, bombing, bottom, building, buildings, burn, center, Christian, Christianity, Christians, church, churches, clinging, communities, congregation, constructed, damaged, declared, deemed, Denmark, destroyed, enemies, established, establishment, facility, far-right, fire, floors, focal, founded, friends, God, groups, guts, hampered, hate, home, host, inside, investigators, Islam, Israel, Israeli, Jack Sara, Jerusalem, Jerusalem Alliance Church Ministry Center, Jew, Jewish, Jews, kill, leaders, leaning, life, light, love, members, Messianic, militant, ministry, missionaries, mobs, Muslim, muslims, Narkiss Street Baptist Church, neighborhood, newly, officials, Old City, opened, Orthodox, Palestine Bible College, Palestinians, Pastor, people, Persecution, point, political, prayer meeting, protection, protestors, purposes, realities, rebuilt, reflecting, religious, senior pastor, sentiment, serve, services, son, state, teenage, threats, ultra-orthodox, unidentified, USA, visiting, volunteers, windows, Zionist \| Leave a comment	cc/2019-30/en_middle_0059.json.gz/line1809
__label__wiki	0.903907	0.903907	No.10 – Edgar Durazo Ties for PBR Canada Finals Event Title Ford Flyaway Ford PBR World Finals Flyaway Sweepstakes Monster Energy Tour Canadian Touring Pro Division Canadian National Standings World Standings Bull Standings PBR Canada Results Year End Honors PBR Network PBR Rewards Rider Relief Fund Offical PBR Shop By: Ted Stovin Monday, February 19, 2018 @ 9:35 PM Edgar Durazo chucks his hat after riding Herf for 88 points in the Championship Round of the 2017 Monster Energy PBR Canada Finals. Photo by Covy Moore / CovyMoore.com CALGARY – With the third season for the premier PBR Canada Monster Energy Tour set to get underway in a month’s time on March 24thin Calgary, we look back at the Top 10 moments from the 2017 season. Coming in at No.10 is Edgar Durazo. The Moctezuma, Sonora, Mexico bull rider holds down this first entry of the countdown courtesy of splitting the event title with Zane Lambert at the 2017 PBR Canada Finals. Inside Saskatoon’s SaskTel Centre this past October, Durazo first rode Vold Rodeo/Prescott’s Heaven’s Basement for 85.5 points to tie for fourth in Round 1. In the Championship Round, Durazo rode Two Big Bucking Bulls’ Herf for 88 points to take first place in the season-ending round and match Lambert’s total of 173.5 points on two bulls. Lambert had reached the total after covering Flying Four Bucking Bulls’ Finning Lil Shorty for 86 points in Round 1 before making the 8 aboard Vold Rodeo/Prescott’s Crooked Nose for 87.5 points in Round 2. Collectively, Durazo earned $3,838.53 and 1,362.5 points to finish the season No.3 in the PBR Canada National Standings after entering the event ranked No.10. The stellar Canadian competitive season came on the heels of a year, 2016, where Durazo was unranked in the nation. Since October’s PBR Canada Finals, the final Monster Energy Tour stop of 2017, Durazo has gone on to reach career milestones. In November, Durazo led Team Mexico to a fifth-place finish at the inaugural PBR Global Cup in Edmonton, Alberta. There he went 2-for-4 to finish seventh in the individual event rankings highlighted by an 86.75 on Chad Berger/Julie Rosen/Clay Struve/Silent Seven’s South Texas Gangster in the bonus round. Last month, on January 13, Durazo won the first Real Time Pain Relief Velocity Tour event of his career, victorious in Portland, Oregon. A week later, he made his debut at the 25th PBR: Unleash the Beast in Oklahoma City. RELATED: Durazo’s International Journey to the PBR’s Highest Level In his first-ever elite tour event, Durazo finished 11th, earning 15 world points and $1,325. Since, he has competed in Sacramento, Kansas City and St. Louis. He is now ranked No.40 in the PBR world standings. With 2018 marking his debut season at the sport’s elite level, Durazo is eligible for the Rookie of the Year title. Not only could he win that title but after a No.3 finish in Canada he’s a contender for the 2018 PBR Canada title. If he were to do that he would be only the third non-Canadian to do so. (Beau Hill - 2009, Stetson Lawrence – 2014) Next up for Durazo is the PBR’s Iron Cowboy at the famed AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas. With the 25th PBR: Unleash the Beast off beginning the second week in May, look for Mexico’s talent to return to Canada indefinitely in Ottawa on May 12th. Stay tuned later this week for the second entry in the countdown, No.9. PBR Canada’s Monster Energy Tour begins its third season on March 24th, 2018 starting at 7:00pm at the Agrium Western Events Centre on Stampede Park in Calgary, Alberta. Tickets are on sale now at Ticketmaster.com The Winstar World Casino and Resort Iron Cowboy, powered by Kawasaki gets underway on Saturday, February 24 at 5:50 p.m. CT. CBS Sports Network will broadcast Inside the PBR Majors starting at 10:00 p.m. ET followed by Rounds 1 and 2 at 10:30 p.m. ET on Saturday February 24th. CBS will broadcast the Championship Round beginning at 12:00 p.m. ET on February 25th. Fans will be able to watch the action in its entirety, live, via PBR’s new OTT platform RidePass. All rounds will begin streaming on Saturday, February 24th at 6:50 p.m. ET. The service can be found at www.ridepass.com, and in the Apple App and Google Play stores under the listing of RidePass. Be sure to stay tuned to PBRCanada.com and follow the tour on Facebook (PBR Canada), Twitter (@PBRCanada), and Instagram (@PBRCanada) for the latest results. Fielder Showing in Canada He May be Moving up Global Cup Ranks for Team Australia Sage Kimzey Wins 2019 Calgary Stampede Green and Gloria Advance to Showdown Sunday at Calgary Stampede Lakevold Injured At PBR Canada Event In Lloydminster Cody Nance Wins Lloydminster PBR WINNING RIDE: Jared Parsonage Rides Cause ‘N’ Effect for 84 points Todd Chotowetz Rides One for the Money for 86 points Cody Casper Rides All Access for 86 points Daylon Swearingen Rides Hammer Down for 79 points Coy Robbins Rides Josiah’s Fire for 81 points About PBR Contact PBR Formulaire de demande d'accréditation des médias PBR Certified Agents PBR USA © The Professional Bull Riders	cc/2019-30/en_middle_0059.json.gz/line1810
__label__cc	0.681502	0.318498	Teddy Bear adoptions provide opportunities to clear up hospital misconceptions with kids April 2, 2013 at 2:13 pm nkazmar 2 comments Children learned how to properly swaddle their new teddy bears Penny is a small, fuzzy gray bear with deep brown eyes who wears pink overalls with heart-shaped buttons. She has a floppy hat with an equally pink flower. Her first memory was waking up at Penn State Hershey Children’s Hospital nestled among her other bear and animal friends who were available for adoption at the Teddy Bear Clinic at Penn State Hershey Children’s Hospital. Penny and her friends were in Hershey to celebrate Child Life week and to help the Child Life specialists talk to the children about their fears of hospitals and going to the doctor. Child Life specialist Carrie Myers, who organized the event, works in the emergency department and sees scared little patients all the time. “This is a time when we, as Child Life Specialists and other medical professionals can address misconceptions children have about the hospital or medical procedures,” she said. “It also teaches them that the hospital can be a fun, safe place.” Clara and Laura Wade (ages 3 and 1) from Williamsport, Pa, whose new baby brother was born with a ‘broken’ heart that the doctors needed to fix, took home two of Penny’s friends, Bear and Dog. The girls listened to their new friends’ heartbeats and took their temperatures as they visited the stations where nurses and therapists helped them give their bears checkups. They saw many of the same instruments that the staff uses when taking care of 14-day-old Timothy after his open heart surgery. Their dad, Martin, hoped the experience would help the girls understand their brother’s surgery and recovery. “I told them baby brother’s heart was broken and had to be fixed,” he said. “I think this will help them when he’s getting poked and prodded, to know that It’s all to make him healthy, not hurt him.” Clara liked the music therapists and the red shaker she got to play. She was happy she was able to check her bear, who she plans to take to Timothy’s doctor. “She’s not healthy, she needs medicine,” she said. Clara’s confident she’ll be all right since her heartbeat and temperature were both good. Another set of sisters, Christianna and Alessandra Hoover (ages 7 and 5) from Readsville, Pa., adopted two more of Penny bear’s friends, Angel and Teddy. The girls were in Hershey to visit their 1-year-old brother C.J. who has leukemia. The teddy bears and the children enjoy a music therapy session. Their grandmother, Elsa Miranda, Los Angeles, California, said that the girls are trying to understand what that means. “If you ask, they know what’s happening. They will tell you: C.J. has leukemia,” she said. But the girls are having a hard time understanding that their healthy looking brother is sick. Like the Wade sisters, the Hoover girls visited the treatment stations where they measured and weighed their stuffed animals and checked their eyes, ears, noses, and mouths. The girls, who are staying at the Ronald McDonald House, were anxious to learn whatever they could to help their brother. They diapered their new friends and buckled them into car seats. Christianna, a good helper to her brother who is still in diapers, is already an expert in changing them. She now knows how to take his temperature since she checked her bear’s. Alessandra did not want help as she practiced swaddling her bear, new skills she hoped would be a help. The music therapy was a hit with the Hoover girls as well. Alessandra hopes her musical skills can help C.J. “I played the guitar and I played it really nice,” she said. “Maybe I can sing him a song.” Many of the remaining furry friends were adopted by a group of children who visited from Children’s Creative Learning Center on the Penn State Hershey campus. While visiting the Teddy Bear Clinic, they checked their animals’ blood pressure and reflexes and learned to cut and wrap bandages. Along the way, they were met by many nurses and therapists who answered their questions. One of the children said that he is afraid of needles and wanted to know why we need them. The nurses explained that while we don’t like needles, sometimes it’s the only way to get the medicine in our bodies and if we’re really sick, to give the medicine faster so it works more quickly. They talked about blood pressure cuffs and oxygen masks and how important the patient’s bracelets can be to make sure nurses give them the right medicine. The children also visited the Safety Center, located off the first floor entrance of the new Children’s Hospital, and learned about bicycle helmets, car seats, and home safety. They peeked into the cupboards and saw cold medicine that looked like grape juice and green floor cleaner that looked like a sports drink and vitamins that looked like candy –and learned how to tell the difference and when to ask mom or dad. They talked about when to call 9-1-1 and what to do when we hear our smoke detectors. The staff members had as much fun as the children at the clinic and hope to continue the tradition next year. Entry filed under: Features, Photos. Tags: child life, Children's Hospital, community, patient care, Penn State Hershey, Penn State Hershey Children's Hospital, therapy. Meeting their Match: Anticipation and excitement surround Match Day 2013 Zeke pays a visit to the Life Lion team 1. Shani Thornton \| April 11, 2013 at 10:01 pm Reblogged this on Child Life Mommy and commented: Child Life Specialists helping children decrease fears and anxiety about going to the doctor. 2. Sandee Weiner \| April 18, 2013 at 10:30 am So nice to see CJs sisters playing with teddy bears and participating in the music thereapy session. It’s so hard on the entire Hoover family – on behalf of those that are doing their best to support them, we invite the readers of the Penn State Medicine site to join in making a contribution … http://www.giveforward.com/CJFund 🙂 Lastly, thanks so much for taking care of our little friend CJ! As temperatures soar this week, be prepared by learning how to protect children from the heat:… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… 1 hour ago	cc/2019-30/en_middle_0059.json.gz/line1814
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__label__cc	0.627246	0.372754	VAE Member Meet + Greet with Valerie Hillings The North Carolina Museum of Art has new leadership! We are excited to offer our community the chance to meet with the new director, Valerie Hillings. This casual reception will include networking opportunities, comments from Valerie about her vision for our state's art museum, light hors d'oeuvres, and beverages. Valerie Hillings brings new perspectives and a wealth of experience to her role as head of NCMA. Valerie is a Duke University graduate and was previously a curator with the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Foundation for over 14 years, her most recent roles with the Guggenheim was curator and associate director of curatorial affairs for the future Guggenheim Abu Dhabi museum. CROSSING THE COUNTY LINE with Jade Wilson Plein Aire Painters' Group	cc/2019-30/en_middle_0059.json.gz/line1817
__label__wiki	0.782406	0.782406	PCMag UK \| Features \| Slideshow Inside Sumerian, Amazon's Big Bet on Augmented and Virtual Reality Why Amazon Is Betting on AR/VR Inside Sumerian, Amazon's Big Bet on Augmented and Virtual Reality PCMag got an exclusive look at Amazon's new 3D development platform for building AR/VR apps, which f Rob Marvin Amazon is making a grand entrance into the augmented and virtual reality space with Sumerian, an all-in-one development platform that can build AR and VR apps for smartphones and headsets, and—soon enough—AR/VR apps that'll run right in your browser. Within these experiences, Sumerian can create immersive virtual worlds populated by "hosts"—3D characters brought to life by the same artificial intelligence tech that powers Alexa. Sumerian is platform-agnostic. Rather than developing its own branded device or headset, Amazon opted for integration with existing offerings. Sumerian is built on open web standards and supports both Apple's ARKit and Google's ARCore, meaning app creators can build one Sumerian app that runs on Android, iOS, Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, and beyond. As a new addition to Amazon Web Services, Sumerian is priced using that service's usage-based model instead of a subscription and connects to other AWS services. Amazon released a Sumerian preview in November when it was first announced, but ahead of its expected May launch, PCMag got an exclusive look inside Sumerian and a few early customer apps. Kyle Roche, General Manager of Amazon Sumerian, took me through a demo of the 3D app-creation platform. I got a tour of Sumerian's drag-and-drop app editor and 3D object library, its Visual State Machine for scripting complex automated scenes, and went inside the process of creating artificially intelligent hosts, which you can have full conversations with inside these virtual experiences. I also spoke to Marco Argenti, a VP who oversees not only AR/VR, but also the AWS Mobile, Serverless Computing, and IoT divisions. Amazon has ambitious plans for Sumerian, and an even grander vision for the role augmented and virtual reality combined with AI will play in our connected future. This article originally appeared on PCMag.com. Why Amazon Is Betting on AR/VR Wading into an entirely new industry or field has never stopped Amazon before. Just look at Whole Foods, Amazon Video, or its efforts in the healthcare and pharmaceutical industries. Roche joked that the name Sumerian came from the sci-fi book Snow Crash (which Amazon is actually adapting as a series) and the idea for "hosts" came from HBO's Westworld. But according to Argenti, Amazon's decision to enter the the AR/VR space actually came down to three key factors: the emergence of smartphone-based augmented reality; untapped VR opportunities in the business-to-business (B2B) market; and helping AWS customers solve pain points with things they were already trying to do. "These signals were strong enough for us to actually start getting into the process of designing Sumerian. In the classic Amazon way, we started working backward from customer use cases and then eventually funding a development team to build the product," Argenti explained. The B2B applications include scenarios like interactive digital signage (think the giant talking hologram ads from Blade Runner: 2049), virtual training, and a host of industrial Internet of Things use cases, such as using sensors to create digital twins and complex simulations. Argenti also underscored the importance of smartphone-based AR reaching an inflection point through ARKit and ARCore. "The camera is becoming a very powerful tool to interact with reality and explore the world around you," he said. "Fast graphics processors can overlay information in real time, and sensors can help construct a 3D reality. The idea is that you have a high-quality, high-definition, context-aware sensor in the hands of billons of people." How Amazon Built Sumerian Amazon started thinking about what AR and VR would look like for AWS customers in late 2016, and a preview debuted at AWS re:Invent about a year later. In between, a few things happened. First, Amazon bought a bankrupt Swedish startup called Goo Technologies; its 3D creation environment, Goo Create, became the foundation of Sumerian's integrated development environment (IDE). Goo Create's visual 3D modeling was also a web-based cloud service, but Amazon took it a step further by moving the back-end to AWS. There are plenty of benefits to building on top of the scalable cloud infrastructure you already own, but a big one is dramatically reducing latency. Roche said one of Sumerian's biggest selling points is that despite how powerful the editor is, there's nothing to download or install. During the demo, Sumerian loaded from a browser URL in seconds. Even doing real-time natural language processing (NLP) and rendering elaborate animations didn't slow it down much. As with low-code development platforms, Sumerian can be used on a basic level with almost no developer experience. However, coders and data scientists can go a lot deeper with programmable APIs and Sumerian's command-line interface to customize scenes and write complex app logic. "We want an experience where you click and you're immediately in the scene," Argenti said. "Then you have 3D graphics tools where you can drag and drop objects. Sumerian is visual tool that can associate what happens when actions or events take place, potentially without writing a line of code." Creating 3D Sumerian Apps The broader design philosophy Amazon followed with Sumerian is to consolidate the creation experience as much as possible. Roche said the idea was to mask a lot of the repetitive development tasks, so the basic process for building a Sumerian app is the same regardless of the AR and VR platforms on which you ultimately publish it. It starts with either choosing a template or jumping straight into creating a new scene. Some of Sumerian's default templates include scenes like office spaces, training rooms and warehouses, a cargo ship, and an outdoor campfire. The main editor supports WebGL and WebVR, and is laid out in the same way as many of the low-code tools we've tested. On the left is an entities panel. An entity is essentially a table in a database that helps you manage the data getting pulled into your app. Below that is the asset window, which is where you can search for the objects you want to pull into a scene or open the full asset library of all Sumerian's 3D models. Roche said Sumerian pulls in a number of open-source object libraries and integrates with the Sketchfab API. Amazon is also interested in integrating with platforms like TurboSquid and Google's Poly AR/VR object library, he said. You can import your own assets into Sumerian as well and drop them into a scene. "The asset panel can serve as a drop zone for an adjustment pipeline," Roche explained. "You can drag most common 3D file formats; we'll convert them, optimize them, and store them for you. One of the things we do on the back-end is if you're using the same asset in multiple scenes, we'll actually create a reference link for you." In the middle of the screen is the main canvas, where you can drag and drop assets and 3D models into a scene. In the corner of the canvas is a button to launch a WebVR preview of your scene. Below that is the timeline editor, which works similarly to video-editing tools. As you pull animations and sounds into frames and use the Visual State Machine to create actions, host behaviors, and event progressions, it will all show up in the timeline, where you can adjust how one state transitions into another. The right-hand column is the inspector panel, which shows the details on any components you're looking at and how you can customize them. For a model that has maybe a hundred different variations, you can adjust things like attributes and textures without actually touching the scene. Amazon's Strategy: Integrate With Everyone Sumerian plays not only in the 3D development space with platforms like Unity, Unreal Engine, and Vuforia, but also in the broader AR/VR ecosystem along with ARKit, ARCore, and Windows Mixed Reality. Roche said Sumerian applies the "build once, run anywhere" philosophy to AR/VR apps and especially for enterprise developers. "Pro 3D developers or pro animators have a studio that's working with them. But most [AWS customers] are web or mobile developers learning something like Unity on the job," said Roche. "Unity is great, but to be really good at it is significantly more difficult than it is to take the skills they have—like if they're good at JavaScript—and ease them into 3D that way. So we decided to focus on that part of the market." Sumerian supports several core open standards: WebGL, WebAR, WebVR, and the coming WebXR framework that will bring AR/VR apps to all devices and browsers across platforms. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) will vote to ratify WebXR in the coming months. At that point, Sumerian apps will be able to run directly in browsers. Between WebGL, WebVR, and WebXR, Sumerian is completely platform-agnostic, and Sumerian published native wrappers to integrate directly with ARKit and ARCore for smartphone-based AR apps. Roche said Sumerian can build apps for any platform that supports WebVR, meaning not only Oculus Rift and HTC Vive but also Samsung Gear VR, Google Daydream View, and others. Sumerian is also working closely with the Google Chrome team on WebXR for browser-based apps. The other major player in the room is Microsoft. While Amazon didn't go as far as to say Sumerian would integrate with the Windows Mixed Reality ecosystem, Roche did say that the latest RS4 release of Microsoft HoloLens includes WebAR support, which means Sumerian can run HoloLens scenes. Amazon is also watching other headsets from companies like Magic Leap and Meta, but its approach gives Sumerian the benefit of flexibility. "We made a choice. We could have gone down a path of making our own proprietary thing and pushing developers toward that," said Argenti. "What we decided instead is to be as broad as possible in supporting what we think will be a massive market. Once everything moves to WebXR, the whole device ecosystem comes with it. We're going after the underlying foundation." Sumerian's AI Hosts Are a Game-Changer Hosts are one of Sumerian's most unique selling points. A host is a 3D-animated character you can place into an AR or VR scene. Users can ask hosts questions, and developers can script a complex set of actions, behaviors, gestures, and movements a host can perform as they have conversations and walk around scenes. Amazon drew inspirations for hosts from all sorts of places, including online games like Second Life and The Sims, Roche said. Sumerian currently has two default hosts—Cristine and Preston—but will launch a whole series of hosts over the course of this year. Amazon built a lot of nuance into these AI characters. Roche showed me a demo of Cristine where he dragged the host into the scene, and pulled open the inspector panel to customize her emotions, facial expressions, and gestures. Amazon will auto-generate gestures as the host talks based on natural language processing of the conversation. So if Cristine says "Hi," it might trigger a waving gesture. With something called a point of interest system, you can check a box in the editor so the host's eyes always pay attention to the camera. So if you're wearing an HTC Vive Pro walking around a 360-degree space, the host can follow you. If it's an AR app connected to your smartphone camera, Roche explained that Amazon's Rekognition deep-learning system can run facial analysis of both where you are and where your face is in the frame to make it look like the host is looking back through your screen directly at you. It gives you the illusion of eye contact. Customers can also create their own custom hosts from scratch using Amazon's Maya SDK, but Amazon provides the basic skeleton from which you can adjust a host's appearance, dialect and inflections, language, and more. In the long-term, Amazon is thinking about ways to make it easier to create hosts. Argenti talked about the idea of a host generator for first-person avatars, or using facial recognition to match rendered characters to real people. "In conjunction with Rekognition, if we procedurally generate as many of these characters as possible, we can try to match you to the closest avatar. We'll take your photo and run reverse facial recognition and match it to a randomized character to give you a host that looks like a version of you." Argenti explained how integrating other AWS services like the Amazon Comprehend natural language processing service could make hosts even more lifelike. Comprehend analyzes text to extract metadata on things like mood and sentiment analysis. So a host could have a different facial expression or manner or speaking based on the mood of the person they're interacting with. "If they're angry, maybe the host calms them down," Argenti said. "There's an evolution not only in the way we convey information, but how we present it though deep sentiment analysis." Pulling in the Voice Services Behind Alexa Hosts aren't much good if they can't speak. You can't say "Hey Alexa" in a Sumerian app the same way you can activate Cortana within Windows Mixed Reality. Instead, Amazon uses the automatic speech recognition and natural language understanding APIs behind Alexa to let hosts have conversations. Sumerian is integrated with Amazon Lex and Amazon Polly. Polly is a text-to-speech service that turns text into scripts a host can speak. Lex is an NLP engine for building conversational interfaces, which is how hosts can understand and respond to what users are saying within an AR or VR app. Sumerian currently supports more than two dozen languages through Polly, and there's a lip sync feature that will match the host's mouth movements to the cadence of the language or speech. "Voice is a medium that really makes sense while you're immersed in AR or VR," Argenti said. "I want to talk to a character if I can see it standing there. So we picked up two of these tools from the AI group and tried to really personify them. We want the scene to be able to listen and respond to us. So you can take an entire Lex flow like you would for a chatbot and just drag it onto the character. In a lot of ways it's actually easier than building an Alexa skill." Scripting Logic in Immersive Worlds Sumerian's Visual State Machine is where you can lay out complex sequences and virtual simulations. Using either the visual timeline editor or the full JavaScript interface, app creators and developers can script logic controlling how hosts or other objects in your scenes respond to different actions. For example, Sumerian includes a flying drone object that you could script to fly around. This all gets more complicated when you introduce real-world objects into the equation. Since Argenti also oversees the serverless computing and IoT divisions at AWS, he talked about how connecting Sumerian to AWS services like Lambda and Greengrass can open up more possibilities for complex simulations. Greengrass is a way for machine-learning models to run locally on IoT devices themselves. Think about a ML model training on the data it's getting from a machine on a factory floor, and then pulling that algorithm into Sumerian to simulate that same machine using AI. "There could really be a simulated world in AR and VR where each character or object is intelligent from machine-learning training in the real world," Argenti said. "Ultimately, you want to try to re-create reality in the most realistic way possible. Today we can get close, but it's not quite there yet from a behavioral standpoint to simulating how things actually work." Weatherbug's Simulated Meteorologist When Amazon took me through a few customer demos of Sumerian, I was initially surprised when the first one was a weather app. But as WeatherBug General Manager Olivier Vincent explained, virtual reality makes a lot more sense for weather data than you'd think. As people have started checking their weather in apps as opposed to watching forecasts on TV, Vincent said weather reports have lost one of their best touches: your local weatherman in front of a green screen. "Weather is about telling you what's going on at a given time in a given place. You can do it in a nice 2D way in your app for a quick look, but we knew how popular weathermen and women have been over the years," said Vincent. "So the idea is to reintroduce that weather person within a more immersive experience in the app." WeatherBug built a Sumerian scene with a virtual news studio with an anchor desk and green screens, and plopped Amazon's default Cristine host in as the meteorologist. The app pulls current weather data for your location that the host will then read back to you as part of a personalized weather forecast. From the main WeatherBug app, Vincent launched the VR viewer that zoomed through a 3D model of Manhattan as Cristine gave the forecast, complete with high and low temperatures, and falling snowflakes. Addison, the Virtual Caregiver New Mexico-based health management tech company Electronic Caregiver had a much different Sumerian experience. The company offers tech for the elderly like a wearable with a medical help button, but it also built a solution called Addision Care, which cuts home care costs and uses conversational AI to assess elderly patients' risks of falls. The company is releasing a kiosk to pharmacies, hospitals, and clinicians that analyzes a patient's gait using machine learning. The software also uses Addison, a custom Sumerian host, to walk users through a verbal questionnaire about their fall history. "Getting seniors to adopt technology is not so easy," said Electronic Caregiver CTO Bryan Chasko. "As it gets better, voice technology is going to engage that market. You're never going to get them to sit down in front of a keyboard and a mouse, but with Addison they can just have a conversation." Electronic Caregiver has been working on Addison for years, developing the 3D character using Amazon Lex and Polly. The company is one of the AWS customers that helped Amazon conceptualize the pain points it could solve with Sumerian and how to automate the AR/VR app-creation pipeline. Judah Tveito, a Virtual Developer at Electronic Caregiver, said Sumerian took processes they had been working on for months and turned it into a few clicks. The company is also working on an Addison mobile app. Electronic Caregiver ultimately envisions Addison as an in-home virtual caregiver, Chasko said. For elderly users living on their own, the AI could do things like remind them to take medication or automatically call 911 if there's a fall or other medical emergency. "One of the biggest issues we feel this can tackle is the isolation that seniors feel when they're living alone," said Chasko. "We really want to have a permanent 24/7 home environment where when you're not talking to Addison [and] you're in the bathroom and you fall, just being able to yell out, 'I need help' could save a lot of lives." The Moneymakers: B2B and IoT Amazon talked a lot about how Sumerian apps could live in interactive digital signage. Imagine someone walking through a hotel lobby, a mall, or a stadium and seeing a host walking alongside them on a screen. It may sound a tad creepy, but hosts could also process contextual information like location to turn the ad into a personalized conversation. Argenti sees hosts as virtual extensions of a company's brand that could change according to what a business needs. "If you put these apps out somewhere with a camera, you can imagine a 3D character engaging with you personally: knowing who you are, maybe the last time you were in the venue, or even the last thing you ordered," Argenti said. "A cruise ship is a good example. The host might say 'Hey, based on where you are on the ship right now, [with] your reservation in 20 minutes, you're not going to make it. Do you want me to push it back 15 minutes? There's also a visual aspect to the experiences you're re-creating. A host talking to you about traveling is going to look different from one talking to you about your financial strategies. Adding location information could have characters change depending on where they find themselves; the way they dress, and the way they move, the inflections they have." Amazon is exploring a range of B2B and IoT applications for Sumerian customers. On the industrial front, Argenti said Nokia put together a system with sensors and visualizations to monitor the environment inside shipping containers to measure things like interior temperature and shock absorption without actually opening them up. "You can imagine a world of AR where we're connecting millions of devices to AWS and getting a lot of sensory data coming from the real world," he said. "Then we can use AR with triangulation to identify an object and display relevant information on top of it. There's a huge applicability there on anything that ranges from service and repair to monitoring, safety, and so forth." There are also broad e-commerce possibilities when you're working with virtual assets. Any 3D model in Sumerian that comes from Amazon's own shopping catalog has the potential to earn a developer referral fees if you add it to an AR/VR scene. It's a way for both enterprises and the smaller businesses and independent developers on AWS to monetize their Sumerian apps. Argenti envisions a lot of crossover opportunities between Sumerian and Amazon's retail division. "We can bridge some of the work that our retail team is doing home furnishings, home electronics, and other high-value items to create 3D models," he said. "Then you can use them for a photo-realistic pass-through of a space. How do I set up a modern loft? What kind of furniture do we organize?" It All Comes Back to AWS Building bridges to all the AR/VR devices and platforms out there is a smart way to lower the barrier to entry to AR/VR development, not just for B2B companies but developers at large. At the same time, the most compelling business incentive behind Sumerian is as a tool to drive broader AWS usage. That’s true both for existing customers trying out the new service, and for new Sumerian users who then begin to use Amazon’s storage, compute, processing, AI, and other services because they’re all integrated into the experience. The pricing model is attractive too, because Amazon imposes no upfront fees. AWS only charges for what you use. It’s all part of what Amazon sees as a larger loop where everything flows through AWS. Data comes from an IoT device, gets processed by an AWS Lambda function, deployed on AWS Greengrass to get to AWS IoT where it trains a machine learning module, and eventually gets pulled as a 3D model into an AR visualization in Sumerian. Amazon's Vision For Our AR/VR Future Amazon hopes Sumerian can play a part in spurring the industry to make 3D mass market products and drive down the cost. On the AR side, Argenti said the basic enablers are in place thanks to ARKit and ARCore. He said the tipping point will come when there’s enough apps and video content from developers. On the VR side, the big changes Amazon hopes to see are are hardware coming down in price, becoming less clunky to wear, and going wireless. “When that happens and you can wear a VR experience like a pair of glasses, VR will really take off,” Argenti said. “I think it needs to be as natural as watching a video on a tablet or a turning on a TV before it’s ready for mainstream consumption at the same level as the other screens we have today. Developing a whole ecosystem around it of content creators, advertisers, end-users, and companies catering to those users is how you do it.” Argenti also underscored the important of immersiveness in virtual and mixed reality experiences. Another one of Amazon’s target use cases for Sumerian apps is education and training. Whether you’re learning how to use a medical device, service a vehicle, or learn a new language, he said it’s about dropping you in an environment that feels as viscerally as possible like the real world. “You could sit down in a French bistro and learn the language without actually being there,” he said. “Host avatars are speaking French to you. The menus are in French. And then within that reality, you could automatically maybe touch a menu and see it translate, passing your finger on top of an item to see the words change into a different language. So much of education is contextual, and so as a learning tool, having an experience engage all your senses is powerful.” Gear Envy: My Collection of 500+ Pieces of Computer and Gaming Hardware Intel Z390 Chipset Unveiled: Unboxing Motherboards From Asrock, MSI The Definitive List of Google Search Easter Eggs The Best Laptops of IFA 2018 Rob Marvin Assistant Editor, Business Rob Marvin is the Assistant Editor of PCMag's Business section. He covers startups, business and venture capital, and writes features, news, and trend stories on all manner of emerging technologies. Beats include: blockchain, artificial intelligence and cognitive computing, augmented reality, legal cannabis tech, social media, the mobile app economy, digital commerce and payments, cloud, Big Data, low code development, containers and microservices, deep linking, equity crowdfunding, M&A, SEO, and enterprise software in general. Rob was previously an editor at SD Times covering software, managing social media, and writing narrative-driven features on any offbeat story or trend he could find. He graduated from Syracuse University's S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications ... See Full Bio More From Rob Marvin Crypto Comparison: Why Bitcoin and Libra Are Vastly Different What to Stream This Weekend Disney+? HBO Max? The New Streaming Giants Explained WarnerMedia's HBO Max Launches in 2020, and It's Bringing 'Friends' Trump Cannot Block Twitter Users, Appeals Court Rules PCMag Galleries The Best Prime Day 2019 Smartphone Deals Amazon Prime Day smartphone deals include discounts on several phones that only ... The Best Prime Day 2019 Desktop PC Deals If you need a powerful desktop for gaming or work, this is ... Lenovo IdeaPad Flex 14 (2019) If you don't mind cranking up the screen brightness, you'll find Lenovo's ... Lenovo ThinkCentre Yoga A940 Lenovo's ThinkCentre Yoga A940 is a rare convertible all-in-one desktop, with a ... Acer Aspire 5 (A515-54-51DJ) This revamped Acer Aspire 5 configuration is a welcome improvement over its ...	cc/2019-30/en_middle_0059.json.gz/line1824
__label__cc	0.64682	0.35318	Lesson: Sheng - Youth and Language in Kenya To gain insight on how language, identity and culture intertwine and change through learning about Sheng. Read online or download PDF. Sheng is a hybrid language that developed among youth in Nairobi perhaps as early at the 1960s. Grammatically inspired by Kiswahili, it draws on many other languages spoken in Kenya. Identified with youth, it is constantly evolving and can be locally specific. Many code switch between Sheng, Swahili, English and other languages and using each intentionally. Originating in the estates of Nairobi and specifically the Eastlands, its use is now widespread among elite, families and the media. It can be a marker of ‘exposure’ and has spread beyond Nairobi and even beyond Kenya. Some have been concerned that the use of Sheng is at the expense of literacy and fluency in Swahili, English and other Kenyan languages. A range of videos about or using Sheng can be found online. Here is just a sampling: Ruvaga, Lenny, and Mary Muturi. Kiswahili Sheng. a24media, 2012 April 12. http://youtu.be/64vxt-ZMOzI KTN Kenya, Sheng vs Kiswahili, 2011 July 17. http://youtu.be/gHgDlp6ixXo (News Report I n Swahili) Kibera Kid Music Video in Sheng-Swahili, HotSunFilms, 2007 October 30. http://youtu.be/AWERctYRK5s . GHETTO RADIO 89.5 FM, http://www.ghettoradio.co.ke. “In February 2008 the Ghetto Radio Foundation set up a radio operation in Nairobi, Kenya. The station transmits on 89.5FM to the wider area of Nairobi and has become one of the country’s most popular youth stations.” Live stream: http://www.thisisafrica.me/radioplayer/live/ghettoradio Read one or more of the following or select others from the bibliography below. Githiora, Chege. “Sheng: Peer Language, Swahili Dialect or Emerging Creole?” Journal of African Cultural Studies 15, no. 2 (2002): 159–181. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1369681022000042637. Karanja, Peter N. “Kiswahili Dialects Endangered: The Case of Kiamu and Kimvita.” International Journal of Humanities and Social Science 2, no. 17 (September 2012). http://www.ijhssnet.com/journals/Vol_2_No_17_September_2012/11.pdf. Mutiga, Jayne. “Effects of Language Spread on a People’ Phenomenology: The Case of Sheng’ in Kenya.” Journal of Language, Technology & Entrepreneurship in Africa 4, no. 1 (May 3, 2013): 1–15. http://dx.doi.org/10.4314/jolte.v4i1. Ogechi, Nathan Oyori. “Sheng as a Youth Identity Marker: Reality or Misconception?” In Culture, Performance & Identity: Paths of Communication in Kenya, 2:75, Art, Culture & Society. Twaweza Communications , Nairobi, Kenya (2008).http://books.google.com/books?id=nCo_XzQZDD0C There are many points of discussion. Here are just two suggestions: In what ways does Sheng signify the power of youth culture in Kenya? Compare Sheng to Ebonics, Spanglish or other forms of American English See Joshua Katz’ work on regional dialect variation in the continental US: http://www4.ncsu.edu/~jakatz2/project-dialect.html With many maps: http://spark.rstudio.com/jkatz/SurveyMaps/ Walter Hickey wrote an article about this for Business Insider: “22 Maps That Show How Americans Speak English Totally Differently From Each Other.” Business Insider, June 5, 2013. http://www.businessinsider.com/22-maps-that-show-the-deepest-linguistic-conflicts-in-america-2013-6. Sheng Bibliography “Sheng Slang.” Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sheng_slang&oldid=558246680. Abdulaziz, Mohamed H., and Ken Osinde. “Sheng and Engsh: Development of Mixed Codes Among the Urban Youth in Kenya.” International Journal of the Sociology of Language 1997, no. 125 (January 1997): 43–64. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/ijsl.1997.125.43. Bosire, M. “Hybrid Languages: The Case of Sheng.” In Selected Proceedings of the 36th Annual Conference on African Linguistics: Shifting the Center of Africanism in Language Politics and Economic Globalization, 185. Cascadilla Proceedings Project, 2006. Githinji, Peter. “Bazes and Their Shibboleths: Lexical Variation and Sheng Speakers’ Identity in Nairobi.” Nordic Journal of African Studies 15, no. 4 (2006): 443–472. Kang’ethe-Iraki, Frederick. “Cognitive Efficiency: The Sheng Phenomenon in Kenya.” Text.Serial.Journal, February 23, 2010. http://elanguage.net/journals/index.php/pragmatics/article/viewArticle/427. Mcintosh, Janet. “Mobile Phones and Mipoho’s Prophecy: The Powers and Dangers of Flying Language.” American Ethnologist 37, no. 2 (2010): 337–353. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1548-1425.2010.01259.x. Momanyi, C. “The Effects of ‘Sheng’in the Teaching of Kiswahili in Kenyan Schools.” The Journal of Pan African Studies 2, no. 8 (2009): 127–138. Nyairo, Joyce Wambũi. “‘Reading The Referents’:(Inter) Textuality in Contemporary Kenyan Popular Music.” Faculty of Humanities, University of the Witwatersrand, 2004. http://wiredspace.wits.ac.za/handle/10539/1855. Ogechi, Nathan Oyori. The Language Situation in Kenya. IUPUI-Moi University FH GPA. Moi University, 2010. http://international.iupui.edu/kenya/resources/Language-Situation-in-Kenya.pdf. ———. “On Lexicalization in Sheng.” Nordic Journal of African Studies 14, no. 3 (2005): 334–355. ———. “Sheng as a Youth Identity Marker: Reality or Misconception?” In Culture, Performance & Identity: Paths of Communication in Kenya, 2:75, Art, Culture & Society. Twaweza Communications , Nairobi, Kenya (2008). http://books.google.com/books?id=nCo_XzQZDD0C ———. Trilingual Codeswitching in Kenya - Evidence from Ekegusii, Kiswahili, English and Sheng. PhD, Universität Hamburg, 2005. http://ediss.sub.uni-hamburg.de/volltexte/2005/2749/. Rudd, Philip W. “Sheng: The Mixed Language of Nairobi.” Ball State University, 2008. http://proquest.umi.com/pqdlink?did=1631230581&Fmt=7&clientId=1566&RQT=309&VName=PQD. Samper, David Arthur. “Talking Sheng: The Role of a Hybrid Language in the Construction of Identity and Youth Culture in Nairobi, Kenya.” Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania, 2002. http://repository.upenn.edu/dissertations/AAI3043947. Swahili Language Resources 1. Classic textbook: Hinnebusch, Thomas J, and Sarah M Mirza. Kiswahili, msingi wa kusema kusoma na kuandika = Swahili, a foundation for speaking, reading, and writing. Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1998. 2. Online Swahili materials from the Five College Center for the Study of World Languages http://langmedia.fivecolleges.edu/swahili/index.html http://langmedia.fivecolleges.edu/mentored_swahili.html 3. Foreign Service online course materials: http://www.livelingua.com/fsi-swahili-course.php African South of the Sahara Selected Internet Resources: Language page http://www-sul.stanford.edu/depts/ssrg/africa/lang.html H-Swahili Network on Swahili Language and Culture http://www.h-net.org/~swahili/ Swahili Links from Pennsylvania State University: http://complit.la.psu.edu/swahili/internet.html Popular Culture, Global Knowledge and Kenya's First Internet Meme Youth Module - Introduction Just saw makmende on CNN Makmende - Wikipedia article Talk:Makmende - Wikipedia article The Missing Wikipedians - blog The Missing Wikipedians -article Language Bibliography Youth Module Bibliography	cc/2019-30/en_middle_0059.json.gz/line1827
__label__wiki	0.765564	0.765564	Disaster Preparedness - NBVC Ready Navy is the Navy’s emergency preparedness program to ensure commands, Sailors, retirees, reservists, Department of Defense (DoD) employees, and their loved ones can be ready to meet crisis-related challenges. By exploring the links on the Ready Navy site you will: Be informed of potential hazards and what to do before, during, and after an emergency Understand the steps to make an emergency plan that includes what to do, where to go, and what to take with you Learn to build a kit to support basic needs for a minimum of three days Access tools and resources to help you and your family prepare for emergency situations that could arise at any time with no warning Contact your Fleet and Family Support Center to request FREE crisis preparedness training for you or for groups of any size. This training is free, portable, and will ensure you have the latest tools to be a READY NAVY command, Sailor, and family. Services are available at both Port Hueneme and Point Mugu. How does Fleet and Family Support Center (FFSC) respond to crises? Family Information Call Center (FICC): The FICC is established to serve as a 24/7 information and referral telephone line for military family members during a crisis. Emergency Family Assistance Center (EFAC): The EFAC serves as a one-stop-shop resource and information hub where families can gather in a crisis for the latest information, legal support, counseling resources, financial support, and more. Mobile Outreach Teams (MOTs): FFSC deploys staff to all areas where Sailors and military families may gather, including on-base shelters/safe havens, community shelters, Local Assistance Centers, and other venues to provide on-site resources, referrals, and crisis/stress first aid. Navy Family Accountability & Assessment System (NFAAS): FFSC Case Managers respond to NFAAS assessments completed by Sailors, DoD civilians, and their families. Case management is provided until all crisis-related resources are resolved. Bldg. 1169 Mon, Wed-Fri: 7:30 am-4:30 pm Tue: 9 am-4:30 pm Ready NavyNavy Family Accountability & Assessment System (NF FFSC Summer Workshop 2019.pdf	cc/2019-30/en_middle_0059.json.gz/line1833
__label__wiki	0.825032	0.825032	Former FBI agent: Russia helped Trump get elected By Justin Wise - 08/01/18 12:16 PM EDT A former FBI special agent who tracked the online activity of extremist groups in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election said this week that he believes Russian hacking and disinformation campaigns in 2016 helped President Trump Donald John TrumpEsper sidesteps question on whether he aligns more with Mattis or Trump Warren embraces Thiel label: 'Good' As tensions escalate, US must intensify pressure on Iran and the IAEA MORE get elected. “Yes. I think just alone the hacking, particularly of the [Democratic National Committee] and the time to release by WikiLeaks and DCLeaks and others of hacked materials offset the media narrative,” Clint Watts said on the Yahoo News podcast “Bots & Ballots" when asked if Russian hacking efforts helped Trump get elected. “If you go back to the infamous ‘Access Hollywood’ tape of Donald Trump, it was immediately followed by the release, within an hour I believe, of hacked emails to try and distract from that narrative, and to essentially inundate that media space with other coverage," he added. Watts, who has been a staunch critic of Trump, looked into the online activities of groups like al Qaeda and the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) during the 2016 presidential campaign, Yahoo reported. He was also among the first to track Russian bots operating social media campaigns and he testified on his findings before the Senate Intelligence Committee in March 2017. Watts added that the FBI had taken note of Russia's disinformation campaign on social media in 2014. “That’s when you saw the message start to pop up that the [Syrian President Bashar] Assad regime needs to stay in power, and the signatures didn’t look quite right,” Watts said. “So when we stayed on that storm of social media accounts, they always supported a narrative that was always pro-Russian." Watts said the messaging from those accounts gradually began to shift, with the themes being about social issues inside the U.S. He added that many agents in the FBI believed the biggest goal for Russia was to advance Trump's presidential bid. His comments, which align with the U.S. intelligence community's assessment that Russia interfered in the 2016 election with the goal of helping Trump win, come as Trump continues to attack special counsel Robert Mueller Robert (Bob) Swan MuellerTop Republican considered Mueller subpoena to box in Democrats Kamala Harris says her Justice Dept would have 'no choice' but to prosecute Trump for obstruction Dem committees win new powers to investigate Trump MORE's probe into Russia's election interference. Trump and his allies have railed against the special counsel investigation and have launched broader attacks against perceived bias among law enforcement officials who were connected to the early stages of the probe. Conservative lawmakers have blasted the FBI over private, anti-Trump text messages between agents during the 2016 election. They've also pointed to a Justice Department Inspector General report, released in mid-June, that criticized the FBI's handling of the probe into Hillary Clinton Hillary Diane Rodham ClintonWhy Trump's bigoted tropes won't work in 2020 The Hill's Morning Report - Presented by JUUL Labs - House to vote to condemn Trump tweet GOP put on the back foot by Trump's race storm MORE's use of a private email server while secretary of State. The inspector general's report said the conduct of the two FBI officials who exchanged the critical texts was “antithetical to the core values of the FBI and the Department of Justice” and cast a “cloud” over the Clinton email probe, but found no evidence that political bias affected the investigation. Trump initially refused to denounce Russia for interfering in the 2016 election while appearing in a joint press conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin in July. He walked back the comments multiple times in the following days, but has continued to criticize the investigation. On July 22, Trump tweeted, "So President Obama knew about Russia before the Election. Why didn’t he do something about it? Why didn’t he tell our campaign?" "Because it is all a big hoax," he said, "that’s why, and he thought Crooked Hillary was going to win!!!" Trump has continued to label the Russia investigation a "witch hunt" and on Wednesday called for Attorney General Jeff Sessions Jefferson (Jeff) Beauregard SessionsPress: Acosta, latest to walk the plank The Hill's Morning Report — Trump retreats on census citizenship question Alabama senator says Trump opposed to Sessions Senate bid MORE to end it "right now." Sessions, who previously served as an adviser to the Trump campaign, recused himself from probes involving Russia last year, leaving Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein Rod RosensteinFeds will not charge officer who killed Eric Garner The Hill's Morning Report — Trump retreats on census citizenship question Judiciary issues blitz of subpoenas for Kushner, Sessions, Trump associates MORE to oversee the special counsel probe. Tags Hillary Clinton Rod Rosenstein Robert Mueller Jeff Sessions Donald Trump	cc/2019-30/en_middle_0059.json.gz/line1838
__label__cc	0.62199	0.37801	Nobody Knows the Identities of the 150 People Killed by U.S. in Somalia, but Most Are Certain They Deserved It March 8 2016, 7:39 p.m. The U.S. used drones and manned aircraft yesterday to drop bombs and missiles on Somalia, ending the lives of at least 150 people. As it virtually always does, the Obama administration instantly claimed that the people killed were “terrorists” and militants — members of the Somali group al Shabaab — but provided no evidence to support that assertion. Nonetheless, most U.S. media reports contained nothing more than quotes from U.S. officials about what happened, conveyed uncritically and with no skepticism of their accuracy: The dead “fighters … were assembled for what American officials believe was a graduation ceremony and prelude to an imminent attack against American troops,” pronounced the New York Times. So, the official story goes, The Terrorists were that very moment “graduating” — receiving their Terrorist degrees — and about to attack U.S. troops when the U.S. killed them. With that boilerplate set of claims in place, huge numbers of people today who have absolutely no idea who was killed are certain that they all deserved it. As my colleague Murtaza Hussain said of the 150 dead people: “We don’t know who they are, but luckily they were all bad.” For mindless authoritarians, the words “terrorist” and “militant” have no meaning other than: anyone who dies when my government drops bombs, or, at best, a “terrorist” is anyone my government tells me is a terrorist. Watch how many people today are defending this strike by claiming “terrorists” and “militants” were killed using those definitions even though they have literally no idea who was killed. Other than the higher-than-normal death toll, this mass killing is an incredibly common event under the presidency of the 2009 Nobel Peace laureate, who has so far bombed seven predominantly Muslim countries. As Nick Turse has reported in The Intercept, Obama has aggressively expanded the stealth drone program and secret war in Africa. This particular mass killing is unlikely to get much attention in the U.S. due to (1) the election-season obsession with horse-race analysis and pressing matters such as the size of Donald Trump’s hands; (2) widespread Democratic indifference to the killing of foreigners where there’s no partisan advantage to be had against the GOP from pretending to care; (3) the invisibility of places like Somalia and the implicit devaluing of lives there; and (4) the complete normalization of the model whereby the U.S. president kills whomever he wants, wherever he wants, without regard for any semblance of law, process, accountability, or evidence. The lack of attention notwithstanding, there are several important points highlighted by yesterday’s bombing and the reaction to it: 1) The U.S. is not at war in Somalia. Congress has never declared war on Somalia, nor has it authorized the use of military force there. Morality and ethics to the side for the moment: What legal authority does Obama even possess to bomb this country? I assume we can all agree that presidents shouldn’t be permitted to just go around killing people they suspect are “bad”: they need some type of legal authority to do the killing. Since 2001, the U.S. government has legally justified its we-bomb-wherever-we-want approach by pointing to the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), enacted by Congress in the wake of 9/11 to authorize the targeting of al Qaeda and “affiliated” forces. But al Shabaab did not exist in 2001 and had nothing to do with 9/11. Indeed, the group has not tried to attack the U.S. but instead, as the New York Times’ Charlie Savage noted in 2011, “is focused on a parochial insurgency in Somalia.” As a result, reported Savage, even “the [Obama] administration does not consider the United States to be at war with every member of the Shabaab.” Instead, in the Obama administration’s view, specific senior members of al Shabaab can be treated as enemy combatants under the AUMF only if they adhere to al Qaeda’s ideology, are “integrated” into its command structure, and could conduct operations outside of Somalia. That’s why the U.S. government yesterday claimed that all the people it killed were about to launch attacks on U.S. soldiers: because, even under its own incredibly expansive view of the AUMF, it would be illegal to kill them merely on the ground that they were all members of al Shabaab, and the government thus needs a claim of “self-defense” to legally justify this. But even under the “self-defense” theory that the U.S. government invoked, it is allowed — under its own policies promulgated in 2013 — to use lethal force away from an active war zone (e.g., Afghanistan) “only against a target that poses a continuing, imminent threat to U.S. persons.” Perhaps these Terrorists were about to imminently attack U.S. troops stationed in the region — immediately after the tassel on their graduation cap was turned at the “graduation ceremony,” they were going on the attack — but again, there is literally no evidence that any of that is true. Given what’s at stake — namely, the conclusion that Obama’s killing of 150 people yesterday was illegal — shouldn’t we be demanding to see evidence that the assertions of his government are actually true? Were these really all al Shabaab fighters and terrorists who were killed? Were they really about to carry out some sort of imminent, dangerous attack on U.S. personnel? Why would anyone be content to blindly believe the self-serving assertions of the U.S. government on these questions without seeing evidence? If you are willing to make excuses for why you don’t want to see any evidence, why would you possibly think you know what happened here — who was killed and under what circumstances — if all you have are conclusory, evidence-free assertions from those who carried out the killings? 2) There are numerous compelling reasons demanding skepticism of U.S. government claims about who it kills in airstrikes. To begin with, the Obama administration has formally re-defined the term “militant” to mean: “all military-age males in a strike zone” unless “there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent.” In other words, the U.S. government presumptively regards all adult males it kills as “militants” unless evidence emerges that they were not. It’s an empty, manipulative term of propaganda and nothing else. Beyond that, the U.S. government’s own documents prove that in the vast majority of cases — 9 out of 10 in fact — it is killing people other than its intended targets. Last April, the New York Times published an article under the headline “Drone Strikes Reveal Uncomfortable Truth: U.S. Is Often Unsure About Who Will Die.” It quoted the scholar Micah Zenko saying, “Most individuals killed are not on a kill list, and the government does not know their names.” Moreover, the U.S. government has repeatedly been caught lying about the identities of its bombings victims. As that April NYT article put it, “Every independent investigation of the strikes has found far more civilian casualties than administration officials admit.” Given that clear record of deliberate deceit, why would any rational person blindly swallow evidence-free assertions from the U.S. government about who it is killing? To put it mildly, extreme skepticism is warranted (after being criticized for its stenography, the final New York Times story yesterday at least included this phrase about the Pentagon’s claims about who it killed: “There was no independent way to verify the claim”). 3) Why does the U.S. have troops stationed in this part of Africa? Remember, even the Obama administration says it is not at war with al Shabaab. Consider how circular this entire rationale is: The U.S., like all countries, obviously has a legitimate interest in protecting its troops from attack. But why does it have troops there at all in need of protection? The answer: The troops are there to operate drone bases and attack people they regard as a threat to them. But if they weren’t there in the first place, these groups could not pose a threat to them. In sum: We need U.S. troops in Africa to launch drone strikes at groups that are trying to attack U.S. troops in Africa. It’s the ultimate self-perpetuating circle of imperialism: We need to deploy troops to other countries in order to attack those who are trying to kill U.S. troops who are deployed there. 4) If you’re an American who has lived under the war on terror, it’s easy to forget how extreme this behavior is. Most countries on the planet don’t routinely run around dropping bombs and killing dozens of people in multiple other countries at once, let alone do so in countries where they’re not at war. But for Americans, this is now all perfectly normalized. We just view our president as vested with the intrinsic, divine right, grounded in American exceptionalism, to deem whomever he wants “Bad Guys” and then — with no trial, no process, no accountability — order them killed. He’s the roving, Global Judge, Jury, and Executioner. And we see nothing disturbing or dangerous or even odd about that. We’ve been inculcated to view the world the way a 6-year-old watches cartoons: Bad Guys should be killed, and that’s the end of the story. So yesterday the president killed roughly 150 people in a country where the U.S. is not at war. The Pentagon issued a five-sentence boilerplate statement declaring them all “terrorists.” And that’s pretty much the end of that. Within literally hours, virtually everyone was ready to forget about the whole thing and move on, content in the knowledge — even without a shred of evidence or information about the people killed — that their government and president did the right thing. Now that is a pacified public and malleable media. Erwin Alber March 20 2016, 3:08 p.m. These drone strikes are just more wanton terrorism by the world’s biggest terrorist organisation : the US government. Their motto seems to be: “Why do engage in random killings of innocent people? Because we can!” Those responsible should all be tried for crimes against humankind. amir jabril March 19 2016, 2:47 a.m. This same report could easily be going on every day in Syria from Assads air force. Oh but you western leftists don’t care about the lives of innocents when someone you support is doing it. Alex Cressman amir jabril March 21 2016, 12:44 a.m. In what universe do leftists support Assad but not Obama? frank miscione Glenn, Is there a list of the names? L Garou And they didn’t even mention the the heroic mission was led by none other than … yessum, Captain Effing America hisself! Ohhhh the humility.. Thank you for drawing attention to this. We Americans should be demanding to know: whom is my government killing on my behalf, with my tax money, and why? “……Somali officials said later on Monday that five al-Shabab commanders had been killed in Saturday’s attack, including Mohamed Mire, the group’s Hiiraan governor, and Yusuf Ali Ugas, al-Shabab’s former Hiiraan chief……. ……..But Mire appeared on Thursday in the village of Buqa Qabe – in the same province the air strikes took place – to dismiss the claims…….” Oh well. Chalk up another miss for the US on an intended target. I sure wish I knew the names of the 150 (or so) randomly bombed “victims”. Anon craigsummers Mr Summers, maybe your good self and the rest of the World may become better informed about all the thousands of victims once the long awaited drone report is released. Everyone can then know perhaps exactly how many civilians have been killed so that human rights groups can measure the effectiveness of the program. Hope we do not have to wait as long as the CIA torture report though, and maybe with a bit of luck the drone report will be somewhat less retracted. Heres hoping craigsummers Anon March 11 2016, 11:12 p.m. “……Mr Summers, maybe your good self and the rest of the World may become better informed about all the thousands of victims once the long awaited drone report is released…..” One thing is for certain, one will never become better informed about the victims of the terrorist activities of al-Shabaab reading the Intercept. Of course, we don’t read the Intercept for that reason. We read it to learn why al-Shabaab are the victims in the GWOT. Baldie McEagle craigsummers “We read it to learn why al-Shabaab are the victims in the GWOT.” Yes, the headline makes that quite clear: Have you ever taken a standardized reading comprehension test? All killing is wrong, and nobody has the right to take another human beings life. The article makes some very important points but I confess to having mixed feelings, which I think might be shared by others. A report in the Guardian quoting local herders, and an Al-Shabaab spokesman. confirms that the victims were indeed militant recruits and there have been no published claims of civilian casualties. This seems to have been done with the full knowledge and support of the Somali government and, as other writers here have indicated, this was in compliance with US laws. Al-Shabaab are a particularly nasty bunch with Al Qaeda and ISIS-aligned factions and a very unpleasant CV. Recent achievements include retaking the port of Merka from African Union troops on Fri Feb 5th, killing 14 civilians in an attack on a hotel in Mogadishu on Feb 26, putting a suicide bomber on an Airbus on Feb 2, killing civilians in Mogadishu hotels in July 2015, murdered sleeping workers in a Kenyan town close to the Somali border in June 2015, and of course slaughtering 148 Kenyan students in April 2015. Baldie McEagle David ” this was in compliance with US laws” What the hell is that supposed to mean? What laws were these—state? federal? Do you pay the slightest attention to what you type? craigsummers Baldie McEagle The reason you can’t challenge what he says is because you are fucking clueless about US law. You ask questions so he will answer it for you. So quit pretending you know what you are talking about. Sli Baldie McEagle Maybe you could make as clear and detailed an argument as he did, and then we’d have something to work with. Actually prove him wrong, if that’s what you’re after. art guerrilla David @ David i’ve heard this David, craigsummers, etc are a particularly nasty bunch, and when MY side gets in power, i can kill whoever i deem nasty, woohoo ! ! ! rat-a-tat-tat-tat in fact, screw that, why wait until i get in power, if i’m justified to do it then, i’m justified to do it now ! ! ! rat-a-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat sociopath or authoritarian ? ’cause it is usually either the socio/psychopaths and/or authoritarians who don’t consider, ‘hmm, i wonder if this shoe will pinch on the other foot…’ Everyone is who they are and no one in this world has the right to take someone’s life so it is wrong for the US government to kill they might have been al shabab but how does the government know that their weren’t families their as they just bombed where they thought the al shababs are it really is sad to see that these governments are only bombing Where Muslims are for they have done to your country nothing yet they think that it’s ok to go ahead and bomb Muslims we are not terrorists yes their might be some who are but that does not account for the the Muslim women and men who have done nothing wrong and yet are still being treated with disrespect everything is in the hands of GOD if someone commits a crime then by all means they should get their punishment no one has the right take the life of another human Daniel Ebady Habib Your logic is almost as bad as your grammar. Dennis Szilak What’s difference between dairy cow and War on Terror? A. You can only milk a dairy cow 3 or 4 years. Leon Dennis Szilak Epic comment. hahahaha. jesse stafford The author of this article obviously never saw the movie Black Hawk Down and obviously is overlooking the rabid hatred of muslim extremist world wide toward the USA and its citizens. I can not say the dead individuals deserved to die but muslim extremist must understand that no one is eager to die because they are allegedly devoutly religious. And this is a killed or be killed world and that concept is never decided in a court of law until the killing is done. art guerrilla jesse stafford geez, i sure hope you are a benito understudy… if so, you have a ways to go, but keep at it… if not, um, whoa… Mr. Howell See, I don’t have to question these things or demand evidence, because there are already people like you doing it for me. I can focus on more pressing concerns such as “What’s for dinner”. Also, not American (Canadian), so… he ain’t MY president. I got’s me a Trudeau. We live in a world where certain lives are perceived to count more than others. How many innocent civilians did the Americans kill in Iraq in 2003, for oil? Tens of thousands. Why is the US government under George Bush not being held accountable for war crimes? Right, I forgot…..those innocent people killed are strangers in some far of land, with different values and customs, and they are probably all terrorists and supporters of terrorism anyway. Its not like they were just ordinary people trying to go about there everyday lives with kids and families etc. But oh well that’s the way the world goes…. verprivate Don’t judge us too harshly… we scrape by day to day under the boot heel of these murderous authoritarian pricks. Javid Do crime do time! I really admire that people like Glenn stands against the country that committing crimes against humanity . Today, we need more activist than ever. The way our country operates under the banner of terrorism, it is outrageous, morally wrong and ethnically an acceptable. It’s very simple: these are war crimes. That we do not enforce the law any more for the 1% is the real threat to the entire world. And when China decides the assistant mayor of Chicago is “bad” and performs a pre-crime assassination on him using a drone, America may lament the new legal standard for “acts of war” they have foisted on the world. Bombing another nation, even if it is done by some shithead with a joystick in a trailer in Virginia whose life is not at risk, is an act of war. Absent that definition, it’s a free-for-all that no longer meets the definition of the word “civilization”. If you are “for” these kinds of policies and actions, for whatever misguided “reasons”, then you stand against all of humanity. JoeSixPack Please refrain from making broad assertions about Americans thinking that this sort of behavior is normalized. While it may be normalized for, and even condoned by the aristocracy, it is not acceptable for large numbers of the working class in this country. Mubeen Well written, Well Said, Sriraman Well..it appears that killing on suspicion has got out of control and becoming systemic in US think tank. I am afraid that we are seeing the emergence of beginning of a new Nazi state. Last time, it was only one dictator who wrecked havoc. This time around whole political class in US is apparently sold to this idea of extra-judicial killing. Perhaps US has no moral basis to lecture North Korea and other countries with poor human rights record. We need to wake up to the fact that there is no good in “Good”, basic human nature is evil and fight for survival. This is exactly why posting at the Intercept is not only fun, but challenging. Below are two posts. Carolyn is a Russian-bot, and rrheard is a far left wing poster who just accepts the ridiculous claims by Carolyn without challenge. This is not just some aberration. This is the norm for the radical left which views the reemergence of the Russian military as a check on US imperialism. Despite Greenwald devoting significant space to the legality of drone strikes in Somalia, in his article titled ”Clapper Calls for Arming Ukrainian Forces: Who Would That Actually Empower?”, he never once mentions the illegal annexation of the Crimean Peninsula or Russian military support for Ukrainian rebels. So US Law and International Law only means something when it is politically expedient. In fact, no one at the Intercept (30+ journalists) addresses Russian aggression as well (as far as I know). Carolyn ? craigsummers Mar. 9 2016, 6:53 p.m. The Russians did not steal the Crimean Peninsula. The population of eastern Crimea VOTED to stay with Russia. The fascists in Ukraine, withi the help of the U.S. and NATO, staged a coup in that country. The Russian government was not the aggressor in that action. Stop spreading lies. rrheard ? Carolyn Wasting your time. Craig is living in some comic book morality fantasy world, where the Reds are bent on world domination are the saviors of the world, the U.S., and the only thing thwarting that agenda is our willingness to bomb things from afar. He’s a like cross between Sterling Hayden in Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove and Dick Cheney. Hell I’m not even sure if push came to shove he wouldn’t side with Israel against America, that’s what sort of confused loopy goof he is………. Thanks to rrheard and Carolyn for the entertainment. Craig, what I was referring to in my earlier post is that you contradicted yourself as highlighted by DocHollywood : Craig Summers : ” Furthermore random drone strikes targeting any military aged. Ale in the past have successfully killed leaders of Al-Shabaab Craig Summers : Again drone operators do not bomb at random. Have they made mistakes absolutely A clear contradiction, so please do not try to muddy the waters. I am fully aware that the latest drone strike was not random, and my post never suggested that it was. “…….Brilliant stuff DocHollywood – just goes to show that Authoritarians like Craig Summers are prepared to defend anything that Governments do, even if that includes war crimes, and random drone bombings……” Sorry, but this was no random bombing. The radical left has transitioned from tree huggers (in the 70s) to terrorist huggers today. If you read the article today by Glenn, you would think the US bombed a choir instead of a bunch of…..well terrorists. This is just one more instance where the radical left not only ignores the murders carried out by one of the most brutal terrorist organizations on earth, but creates 150 victims out of their misfortunes: “…….With that boilerplate set of claims in place, huge numbers of people today who have absolutely no idea who was killed are certain that they all deserved it. As my colleague Murtaza Hussain said of the 150 dead people: “We don’t know who they are, but luckily they were all bad.” For mindless authoritarians, the words “terrorist” and “militant” have no meaning other than: anyone who dies when my government drops bombs, or, at best, a “terrorist” is anyone my government tells me is a terrorist. Watch how many people today are defending this strike by claiming “terrorists” and “militants” were killed using those definitions even though they have literally no idea who was killed……” Well, cry me a river for the latest additions to martyrdom. Over the coming weeks, there will be approximately 10500 less virgins in heaven. Mister craigsummers And how many of the 10,500 killed virgins you refer to will be civilians including innocent women and children Craig ? craigsummers Mister They will just lose their virginity, not be killed. By the way, I didn’t contradict myself. I was being sarcastic. Trust me. I am happy that you don’t believe that drones attacks are random. Craig, forgive me but I do not understand why you state that children and women, civillians could not lose their lives in drone attacks but quote “they will lose their virginity” Children and civillian women were raped by US marines in the Vietanam War Craig, and many instances are documented in the book Kill anything that moves by Nick Turse. However, in the case of drone attacks many civillians have already been killed, and many more may be killed too. Don’t also don’t take comfort that I do not believe drone attacks are random. Drone attacks do kill civillians, and have done on numerous occasions, and the most despicable thing is that the civillians slaughtered, and burnt to ashes, have then described as killed terrorists. This is the exact same practice used in the Vietnam War when the military adopted corporate style targets and incentives for body count, and then killing civillians daily and calling them in as Vietcom. The US military command was complicit in the orders for this. It was a total overkill, and helped no doubt to over inflate the size of the enemy and scale of the war, and no doubt the investment in weapons, and arms required. Killing is not the answer to bring about peace, and unfortunately we live in a World where as well as terrorist groups, we have elite wealthy business opportunists, who shape foreign policy, and work with state terrorist Governments to profit from dirty wars. I am anti war and a far left socialist, but I do not hug or condone any terrorists, not terrorist groups or terrorist states. I get your point Thank you Craig. I respect you for saying that. And to you also Peter craigsummers If you take another pass at the article you’ll see that he’s not saying the 150 are saints. This article isn’t to exculpate them, it’s to challenge the public to actually pay attention to the impunity with which their government can kill people. You’re part of the example of what the author is talking about, where you don’t question the information our government feeds you and take it at face value. You don’t know that everyone there deserved to die, and based on what we know about the collateral damage of drone strikes, it’s more than likely innocents were also killed. That’s the issue here. If any other country did this, there would be an outrage. craigsummers Peter Thanks Peter I understand the point of the article. Al-Shabaab has 7000-9000 fighters who are fighting to impose sharia law on the population in Somalia. They have carried out numerous terrorists attacks against targets primarily inside of Somalia, but they have also attacked outside of Somalia like the targeting of Kenyan students where 147 were murdered. They are a racist, Islamic terrorist organization. Greenwald offers no solution. He offers no alternatives. He just says that we have no clue who we killed. But that is entirely false. The US cased this target out for weeks and worked with the African forces and the government of Somalia. Did we kill an innocent bystander? Possibly, but no military action is foolproof. Did Al-Shabaab target and murder 147 civilians in Kenya? Absolutely – so I have no qualms about killing as many of the terrorists as possible. “What legal authority does Obama even possess to bomb this country?” Every year the US executive through the State Department requests funds to Support AMISOM and the Somali Forces. Thoses requests called Budget Justification have a language very similar to the Somalia Stabilization Act of November 2013 that a commenter mentioned here, but was not enacted. The yearly requests from the State Department are more detailed than the language of the Act of November 2013. The requests state that the US Military will provide military assistance to AMISOM through logistics and training and the State Department clearly states that the US military will provide OPERATIONAL support to Somali Forces. Every year the US Congress says yes to those requests and give funds to the State Department and DOD to finance those missions. In US laws when the executive tells Congress what it would like to do and Congress says yes and gives funds to the executive to do it, then the executive has the authorization to do it. Budgets are laws. Congress did not tell the executive to bomb Somalia. Congress authorizes the US executive every year to provide OPERATIONAL support to Somali Forces. Operational support in military terms means that US troops will have to be deployed to the hot areas and those troops will be targeted by the enemy of the Somali Forces. In that case, the main enemies are Al Shabab and a few pirates. So, under US laws Obama is clearly authorized to have troops in Somalia and as the commander in chief he is authorized to use lethal force against enemies who are willing to attack US troops. Congress never authorizes the US to bomb Uganda neither. The US executive never asks Congress authorization to start a war with Uganda. However, the executive asks Congress authorization to send troops in a combat area to support local armed forces against the LRA. Under US laws and international laws, the president can authorize the use of lethal force against members of the LRA if they are about to attack US troops in Uganda. Even if we forget about international laws and UN resolutions, which clearly back the use of force against Al Shabab Obama, through the War Powers would still have the legal authority to bomb Al Shahab if indeed the fighters were about to attack US troops. I am not sure whether Greenwald is just attempting to distort reality to rally a specific crowd or he honestly does not understand how US laws work. On a legal perspective, Greenwald is wrong. Doug Legal advisor NO, you are wrong! No matter how much lega-lastix you attempt to spin, the USA have no lawful mandate to go bomb people in an entirely different country when the US is not at all threatened by them. The USA Congress, and the U.N, are TOLD . . . .they do not decide! Are you not familiar with Smedley Butler and his expose “War is a racket”? The fact that those individuals, in Somalia, are resisting the economic and military take-over in their countries make them Heroes in all sense of the word, not “bad guys”…… and the USA a fucking parasitic, terroristic monster which is using their own lower mentality humanity as gun carrying drones and remotely operated killing machines in this diabolical drive for expanding their fucking obscene AngloZionist (as per The Saker) Psycho-Empire. The “Pentagon” has hundreds of military bases all around the world. This can only be seen as an aggressive tactic for corporate annexation and escalation of military conflict with resultant overall chaos and conflagration. Legal Advisor Doug First, this is not lega-lastix. The United States has an elected Congress that passes laws. The United States is also a member of the United Nations and a permanent member of the UN Security Council. Both entities, Congress and United Nations have the right issue decisions that are binding. Both of them issued decisions against Al Shabab and both have asked governments to support military forces against Al Shabab. When nations disregard UN resolutions (Israel), they are in full violations of international laws. If you are living under your own legal framework, then you have to come up with your own legal standards to make your point. But in terms of current US laws and international laws, the US executive is fully authorized to have troops in Somalia and to bomb Al Shabab fighters if those troops are threatened. 2) “The fact that those individuals, in Somalia, are resisting the economic and military take-over in their countries make them Heroes in all sense of the word, not “bad guys” This is not a legal matter, but I would really like to know what kinds of moral standards you use to conclude that a group of fighters who bomb their own citizens struggling in markets to find food, students in their classrooms in foreign countries or shoppers with their families in malls are “Heroes”. 3)”The “Pentagon” has hundreds of military bases all around the world. This can only be seen as an aggressive tactic for corporate annexation and escalation of military conflict with resultant overall chaos and conflagration.” This is your political view. It has nothing to do with the legal argument at hand. It is also a distorted view since citizens or Germany, Spain, U.K, Turkey, and many others have access to strong democratic institutions that can compel US troops to leave their territory. Ecuador is a perfect example. Killing is not the answer to bring about peace, and only creates a never ending cycle of more hatred, killing and violence borne from fear and from those seeking revenge. The solution for World peace and harmony is for every individual on this planet, regardless of their beliefs, religion, or political affiliation, to work to overcome selfishness. Greed must be transformed into generosity. Ignorance has to be turned into wisdom. We must all be mindful of how we create and use wealth and technology, and to ensure that it, and our lifestyles bring happiness, without causing harm to others. We need to be aware that following a path of materialism will never bring sustainable happiness. Learning that true prosperity is self reliance, self dignity, contentment, generosity, and mindfulness. Everyone needs to value a peaceful life in which one relates harmoniously to all sentient beings and the environment. Knowing how to live simply, having time to enjoy oneself and the community. Learning tolerance and understanding of others cultures, religions, and political beliefs. The wars and killing are symptoms of a World obsessed with money, and capitalist greed, and selfishness. We can only bring about World peace and harmony if each and everyone one of us changes. Greg Anon ValkLeroux A few weeks ago when that small hands ‘great’ wannabe dictator, Donald Trump was going on about ‘taking out’ the families of ‘potential’ terrorist, everyone was ‘shocked’ and couldn’t believe that anyone could go so low. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlZFGtJhzCE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHUfOWrA45A You would never get a democrat that would even suggest or do such an crazy thing, would you? Never. http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2015/04/abdulrahman-al-awlaki-obama-drone The son of Anwar al-Awlaki was killed in a drone strike just a week or two after his dad. With him a few friends. A 16 year old boy. His sin? Being a family member of Anwar al-Awlaki. A ‘potential’ problem for the Obama administration in the future. So yes, lets take him out. But hey, Obama is the cool guy. He is fighting the ‘good’ fight. It’s totally different if we, the neoliberal scum we are, is doing this short of thing. You must just look at the bigger picture through our hypocritical shit filled eyes. ValkLeroux ValkLeroux Clever me didn’t noticed that it was on Threats instead of Latest, so I thought I missed filling in my detail or something and my post didn’t went through. The great wannabe dictator, Donald Trump was put on the hot seat for saying that he will ‘take out’ the families of ‘potential’ terrorist. ‘This is CNN. Where we only give you partial truths, but hey.’ Funny thing, really. Everyone acting so shocked. You know, it’s not like a democrat, say, by the name of Barack Obama, would ever do something like that, would he? Anwar al-Awlaki’s son was killed just a few weeks after him by drone strike. A 16 year old boy that could ‘potentially’ be a problem in the future. Going by how the Obama administration handle things. But hey, Obama is the cool guy, folks. We will pretend that we despise that short of thing if it is someone else that is doing it, but we are the ‘good’ guys. Us neoliberal fuckers. Boston Patriot Hi Glenn, it’s been a long time. I was a regular reader and commenter back in UT and Salon days. It’s been great watching your career, and I want to thank you for your tremendous courage in regards to the Snowden saga. You’ve been a very lonely voice continuing to speak truth to power, despite the increasingly Orwellian actions of the US. So, Nobel Peace laureate Barack Obama extinguishes 150 nameless souls halfway across the world, and very few Americans are going to even bat an eye. They were “terrorists”, after all…at least we think they might have been. We’re going to check up on that real soon. You know, confirming that they were “bad” and deserved to be “horrifically murdered”. When Bush committed these types of acts, liberals were rightfully morally outraged. Now that the Democrats have held the Executive Office for 8 years, the moral outrage is nowhere to be found. I sense apathy. Complacency. Disappointment? Sure…but no outrage. What if this was Bush committing this act? A silent coup occurred in the fall of 2001. 9/11 was either part of that coup, or the decisive reaction to 9/11 was the coup. Either way, the men-behind-the-curtains took the reins in September of 2001, and they haven’t handed them back in regards to the operational oversight of the Global War on Terror. 9/11 is still actively used to justify these renegade acts, no matter how heinous. It ironically “trumps” all other reasoning. This open-ended AUMF, the Patriot Act, the Homeland Security Act, The Military Commissions Act…all of this legislation enacted by Bush was meant to reinforce this silent coup. Just ask yourself this question. In regards to the Global War on Terror, and the horrific actions being committed by the US….do you think it really matters who the President is? This global hunting of ISIS and other “enemy combatants” is going to continue indefinitely – whether Hillary, Bernie, Trump or Mickey Mouse is elected President. Does anyone disagree? If so, then what has become of our republic? What are we supposed to do Glenn? The representative system is irreparably broken. Our leaders – or their nameless puppeteers – are murdering human souls based on….hunches. We have no political voice to stop it. The democratic system is completely distorted right now. Now, Trump is wildly popular while regularly being compared to Hitler by the M$M, the NSA is admitting to the use of military (read armed) drones in the skies over the US, in violation of Posse Comitatus, and again…no one is batting an eye? Are you fucking kidding me? What can Americans do in 2016 to slow this march toward total tyranny? dahoit Boston Patriot If the MSM says he’s Hitler,that means Trump is a saint. BenjaminAP What is power, motherfucker? Schmitt famously defined the sovereign as “he who decides on the exception.” …in the Unites States, the legally and constitutionally prescribed path to war has been the exception, and the unauthorized, extra-legal (if not illegal) military expedition has been the rule. http://coreyrobin.com/2014/09/18/barack-obamas-upside-down-schmittianism/ Shoaib BenjaminAP That’s the true face of deplorable fascists – they’ll quote even a Nazzi if it “endorses” their tyranny and sub-human conscience. Hear these angels speak against Nazzi’s otherwise. Worthless hypocrites! I appreciate your attempt to enlighten, I find you presumptuous as a youth however, ‘But for Americans, this is now all perfectly normalized. We just view our president as vested with the intrinsic, divine right, grounded in American exceptionalism, to deem whomever he wants “Bad Guys” and then — with no trial, no process, no accountability — order them killed. He’s the roving, Global Judge, Jury, and Executioner. And we see nothing disturbing or dangerous or even odd about that. We’ve been inculcated to view the world the way a 6-year-old watches cartoons: Bad Guys should be killed, and that’s the end of the story….nothing about this is in any way acceptable to me, I am simply trapped, living within the boundaries of the u.s….however embarrassing this may be for myself and all who recognize people – as people… FluffytheObeseCat I would love to hear an argument — any argument — in defense of our numerous, under-discussed military actions in Africa. These remote, generally poor lands are as far from us as one can get. The partisans and nations there have no missiles that could reach us. It seems as though our civilian Administration deploys men there largely to keep contractors funded and busy. That there are “enemies” of the US in north central Africa & the Mahgreb I have no doubt. That we are somehow thwarting them, or managing them so as to better the interests of our nation…………. ah, no. Not too damned likely. It looks like a great make-work program for our security state, run by important shadowy guys who see the national interest as a fluid concept that one genuflects towards only when absolutely necessary. As Glenn points out in this article, no branch of our federal government even bothers to bring an argument to the electorate about our African adventures. At all. We scatter ‘advisers’ and ordinance across the Sahel and southern Sahara and it never makes the news, except in this bizarre, abbreviated and sanitized way. -Mona- FluffytheObeseCat The militarists have had Africa in their sights for a decade or better. Under Rumsfeld they created the United States Africa Command, or AFRICOM. I recall some were writing about this at the time, asking: WTF? But so much else was going on in that period it didn’t get much attention. You can bet the U.S. empire has a great deal more to do in Africa — they haven’t poured all that money into AFRICOM without plans to make it “useful.” ContinuousDeception -Mona- Now that you mention this AFRICOM; didn’t TI recently run a story reporting and showing U.S. troops training African troops… they’re actively doing that now. May have been another news site? craigsummers ContinuousDeception It was this site. The article was actually fairly balanced. I suspect the author may lose his job. dahoit FluffytheObeseCat It’s the job of the MSM,obviously,but they don’t want US to know,just like every other crime in the 21st century. I’m still waiting for proof who did 9-11,and who funded it.You’d think it would be a recurring theme,wouldn’t you?Of course they say OBL did the dirty deed,wo tangible proof,but that still leaves the funding under the rock of forgetfullness. They are running out of rocks. When are educated American’s going stop acting like the bombing of a new country is a foreign policy change, opposed to part of the same continuous foreign policy (General Wesley Clark on planned wars in ME: youtu.be/9RC1Mepk_Sw). The average American has been propagandized to the point of xenophobia. No matter how bad or illogical an excuse is conjured up for killing people or an act of war, many Americans just accept it because they don’t really care why these people were killed or bombed. Since they have been conditioned to hate those people the reason is inconsequential to them, they just accept it and think they are just better off now. Unfortunately our actions do have consequences in the form of blow-back. The people making our foreign policy realize this, yet try to censure any critical examination of the consequences of our foreign actions, thus attempting to divorce cause from affect (http://fair.org/take-action/action-alerts/a-new-blacklist-for-quotexcuse-makersquot/.). For example ISIS wouldn’t exist if we didn’t try to overthrow the Syrian government. As a consequence our actions ISIS was created, empowered and attacked civilians in Paris, San Bernardino, and on an airplane in Egypt. Yet by masking the continuity of this Neocon regime change foreign policy, we are handicapped in our knowledge making it easier for this policy to continue, leaving us all worst off. somali peace I am Somali and completely support the us campaign against the group. Alshabab kills my people every single day. It sad because I don’t see any one writing about the death of over a hundred peacekeepers last month in the hands of this group. Or the sucide bombings that take place almost every week. I felt anger reading your article because I have a sense that you have no idea about thr situation in Somalia. Because noby feels bad for people that rape a 13 year old and then publically stone her to death or thr people that decapitate innocent civilians only because they are different in thinking. By the way the us is helping Somalia because the government Requested that. And It is highly unlikely that any civilian was hurt even the Somali media and the terrorist media didn’t mention colateral damage. tinc somali peace Then let’s have some evidence and proof that the 150 people killed were actually members of Alshabab instead of vague assurances. Let’s have an open debate on bombing Somalia. The Congress is supposed to debate and vote upon whether to wage war, not one person unilaterally deciding who should die. And to those saying that Alshabab did terrible things like torture and mass murder and beheadings–how would you punish the Americans who did these things in Iraq and Afghanistan? How would you punish brutal regimes like our good friends in Saudi Arabia who behead people all the time? Mister tinc Well said Tinc , and don’t forget the punishing of the US and UK war criminals who lied about non existent weapons of mass destruction which resulted in the death of 200,000 Iraqi civilians. somali peace tinc Why don’t you go to Somalia and collect the evidence yourself. I am sure the Shabab will welcome you with open hands. Don’t get me wrong i am not a fun of US foreign policy and i understand were you are coming from but what is more humane, killing 150 terrorists with 0 to minimum civilian casualty or letting the 150 terrorists (most of them willing to become suicide bombers) live so that they could kill far higher number of certainly innocent peolpe. : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enRVsBDz1oo Dar somali peace Still doesn’t give the US the right to intervene. Like a vampire, if you invite the US to intervene in your country in a way you like, you can’t complain later when it does so in a way you don’t like. itsfinnagain March 9 2016, 11:39 p.m. Nobody cares. Sorry but millions of people die in war and nobody cares. Jeneva Black Thank you for putting together this information, all of it collected together helps people to see the truth much clearer. Sillyputty @CraigSummers Reading comprehension continues to elude you. This is what the article is about (hint: it’s called “The Headline”) Once again, you’ve completely missed the point of the article, and are arguing about things that aren’t even relevant to the topic at hand. Makes no sense. “Saying it ain’t fair, over and over again while you stand in front of a wrecking ball is kinda senseless, I think.” – Dan Groat craigsummers Sillyputty You are going to have to be a little more specific. I have more than one post on this thread. Sillyputty craigsummers “You are going to have to be a little more specific.” No, not really, as you’ve proven my point with each one. Again. “We never believe anything we don’t want to, we see what we want to see.” – Joe DeMarco You make no sense, but carry on DocHollywood Sillyputty CraigSummers v CraigSummers Makes no sense. – Sillyputty You are going to have to be a little more specific. I have more than one post on this thread. – CraigSummers He may have a point there, SillyPutty. CraigSummers had not only made more than one post on this thread, he has held more than one position too: Furthermore, random drone strikes targeting any military aged male in the past have successfully killed leaders of al-Shabaab – CraigSummers Again, drone operators do not bomb at random. Have they made mistakes? Absolutely, however, so have fighter jets, tanks, artillery, machine guns and M16 rifles.- CraigSummers His positions are clear: random attacks have been successful in the absence of random attacks. What’s left to argue? :) -Mona- DocHollywood Ha! Good catch, Doc, Not that it will impeded Craig from continuing in his endless spewing of fallacies and depraved bullshit. craigsummers -Mona- There was nothing caught there at all by the Hollywood boy. I was being sarcastic. The US has killed numerous al-Qaeda, Taliban and ISIS leaders – and this hasn’t happened by just blind luck which is the suggestion by Greenwald when he quoted the New York Times story: “…….Beyond that, the U.S. government’s own documents prove that in the vast majority of cases — 9 out of 10 in fact — it is killing people other than its intended targets. …..” Greenwald left out the other statistics and quotes in the same article which undermine this extremely deceptive statement. Thanks as always Mona Mister DocHollywood Brilliant stuff DocHollywood – just goes to show that Authoritarians like Craig Summers are prepared to defend anything that Governments do, even if that includes war crimes, and random drone bombings. You have caught him out royally proving that he is even willing to lie and spout utter bullshit to deny and defend what he has already stated he knows. Liars need good memories, and unfortunately for Craig his is failing him. Lol “……..With that boilerplate set of claims in place, huge numbers of people today who have absolutely no idea who was killed are certain that they all deserved it. As my colleague Murtaza Hussain said of the 150 dead people: “We don’t know who they are, but luckily they were all bad.” For mindless authoritarians, the words “terrorist” and “militant” have no meaning other than: anyone who dies when my government drops bombs, or, at best, a “terrorist” is anyone my government tells me is a terrorist…….” I feel fairly comfortable saying they deserved to be killed (BBC). “…….A spokesman for al-Shabab, Sheikh Abdiasis Abu Musab, confirmed to Reuters news agency that the US had bombed an area controlled by the militants [read: terrorist training camp] However, the US had exaggerated the number of casualties, he said. “We never gather 100 fighters [terrorists] in one spot for security reasons. We know the sky is full of planes,” the spokesman added…….The camp had been under surveillance for some time, Capt Davis said……..A Somali official said their intelligence service cooperated with the US ahead of the air strikes, the Associated Press news agency reports……” my inserted comments in brackets The same terrorist organization murdered 147 students at a University in Kenya on April 2, 2015. “………The massacre that killed 147 people and wounded scores of others at a Kenyan university lasted for hours Thursday before the terror was over…….The Somalia-based Al-Shabaab militant group claimed responsibility for the assault……..” Furthermore, random drone strikes targeting any military aged male in the past have successfully killed leaders of al-Shabaab (BBC): “……In a 2008 strike, it killed al-Shabab leader Adan Hashi Ayro. His successor Ahmed Godane was killed in a 2014 strike……” Why would anyone have any sympathy for the killing of 150 of them by the US military? Makes no sense -Mona- craigsummers Constitution of the United States, Article I, Section 8, Clause 11: The Congress shall have Power…To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water; Craig Summers is a lawless authoritarian. He endorses torture, doesn’t have any use for the 4th Amendment, and also prefers not to see presidents constrained by the Separation of Powers mandated by the Constitution. “……Craig Summers is a lawless authoritarian. He endorses torture, doesn’t have any use for the 4th Amendment, and also prefers not to see presidents constrained by the Separation of Powers mandated by the Constitution……” You are hilarious, Mona. Harold Koh explained the legal case for the Obama Administration (New York Times): “……”The U.S. is in armed conflict with al-Qaida as well as the Taliban and associated forces in response to the horrific acts of 9/11,” he told the crowd of lawyers, “and may use force consistent with its right to self-defense under international law.”……. ……..Koh explained that Congress made the conflict official when it passed a law known as the Authorization for the Use of Military Force shortly after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001……. ……..He said the government uses advanced technologies to ensure “that civilian casualties are minimized in carrying out such operations.” And he said whether a given person becomes a target depends on various considerations, “including those related to the imminence of the threat, the sovereignty of the other states involved, and the willingness and ability of those states to suppress the threat the target poses.”…… ……..Koh argued that a state engaged in armed conflict or legitimate self defense (such as the U.S., according to Obama administration reasoning) is not required to provide targets with legal process before using lethal force……” You already knew all of this Mona. If you don’t like it take them to court, but it is the legal reasoning for the GWOT. I’m fine with it. Terrorizing the terrorist is one important use of drones. Thanks Mona. Glenn already dispatched that argument up above: So, again Craig, why do you ignore the Constitution of the United States regarding the Separation of Powers? Hi Mona I find it interesting that you have completely avoided responding directly to two of my post – and you accuse me of whataboutery? “……Instead, in the Obama administration’s view, specific senior members of al Shabaab can be treated as enemy combatants under the AUMF only if they adhere to al Qaeda’s ideology, are “integrated” into its command structure, and could conduct operations outside of Somalia……” In 2012, al Shabaab leaderGodane pledged his support to al-Qaeda (Wikipedia): “……On February 9, 2012, Mukhtar Abu al-Zubair ‘Godane’ announced in a fifteen-minute video message that Al-Shabaab would be joining the militant Islamist organization al-Qaeda, under the leadership of Ayman al-Zawahiri. Al-Zubair stated, “On behalf of the soldiers and the commanders in al-Shabaab, we pledge allegiance to you. So lead us to the path of jihad and martyrdom that was drawn by our imam, the martyr Osama.”[8] Al-Zawahiri approved and welcomed Al-Shabaab as al-Qaeda’s Somalia-based affiliate in a 15-minute video response, stating “Today, I have glad tidings for the Muslim Ummah that will please the believers and disturb the disbelievers, which is the joining of the Shabaab al-Mujahideen Movement in Somalia to Qaeda al-Jihad, to support the jihadi unity against the Zio-Crusader campaign and their assistants amongst the treacherous agent rulers.”…..” All those conditions mentioned by Greenwald were met. The US is at war with an affiliate of al-Qaeda in Somalia which IS a threat to attack the US. In addition, al-Shabaab has conducted operations outside of Somalia murdering 147 students in Kenya. Al-Shabaab is an international terrorist organization. In my honest opinion, we have every duty to attack the Islamic terrorist organization, al-Shabaab. They have targeted and murdered numerous civilians. Civilian deaths seem to mean something to you when it is politically expedient Mona. We inadvertently kill civilians and that’s bad. Shabaab targets and kills civilians – just let them be. That is one primary difference between radical leftists and liberals as I have pointed out numerous times in the past. My Craig, what highly selective wiki quoting you have going there. There’s a reason the Obama administration isn’t claiming authorization per the AUMF. As the wiki entry goes on to say, Al-Shabaab East Africa revolted against the internationalist Godane faction (that bombed the Kenyan mall) and has insisted on remaining a Somalian organization fighting local powers. Goldan’e people fled Al-Shabaab several years ago, I believe for Yemen. Al-Shabaab is a Somalian entity fighting for control of Somalia. So, and again, why do you ignore the Constitution of the United States regarding the Separation of Powers? According to Wikipedia, Godane won out in an internal struggle for the direction of the organization: “…….. By 2013, the internal rifts within Al-Shabaab erupted into all-out warfare between Godane’s faction and those of other leaders in the organization. In late June, four senior Shabaab commanders were executed under the orders of Godane. One of these commanders was Ibrahim al-Afghani, who had complained about the leadership style of Godane in a letter to Ayman al-Zawahiri. Sixteen others were arrested, and Aweys fled.[176] He was later taken into custody in Mogadishu by Somali government forces.[177] On 12 September, Omar Hammami, who had left the group due to significant disagreements with Godane, was killed by Al-Shabaab forces. The Westgate shopping mall shooting in September was said by Simon Tisdall to be a reflection of the power struggle within the insurgent group, with Godane’s hardline global jihadi faction seeking to exert its authority.[178]…..” Indeed they did. “……why do you ignore the Constitution of the United States regarding the Separation of Powers?….” I don’t and to prove that point, the US killed up to 150 terrorists associated with the al-Shabaab International terrorist organization and affiliate of al-Qaeda. The ACLU can challenge the decision to bomb al-Shabaab in court. In the meantime, there are 150 less terrorists to target and murder innocent civilians. Charlie Savage reported this in ’11 But the administration does not consider the United States to be at war with every member of the Shabab, officials said. Rather, the government decided that Mr. Warsame and a handful of other individual Shabab leaders could be made targets or detained because they were integrated with Al Qaeda or its Yemen branch and were said to be looking beyond the internal Somali conflict. So Craig, were these 150 dead people integrated with Al Qaeda for purposes beyond Somalia? The ACLU can challenge the decision to bomb al-Shabaab in court. That’d be great. But how? “…….So Craig, were these 150 dead people integrated with Al Qaeda for purposes beyond Somalia?……” Yep Mona. Every single one of the 150 terrorists killed by the US air strikes were integrated with al-Qaeda. And if there happened to be one or two that weren’t integrated into al-Qaeda, let me be the first to provide a sincere apology. Mark craigsummers Craig, asserting it unfortunately does not make it so: “the US killed 150 terrorists”. Um no, they didn’t, they said themselves they have no idea whatsoever whom they killed. And they’ve said themselves their pre-crime assassination methods have a 6% accuracy rate. Hopefully you do not espouse the death penalty using methods that are 6% accurate as to the recipient of the penalty? If you do, well then I wish you a hearty “Sieg Heil!” “Harold Koh explained the legal case for the Obama Administration (New York Times):” Doesn’t that say it all! photosymbiosis craigsummers “Why would anyone have any sympathy for the killing of 150 of them. . .” I think the point of the article is that it is unclear who the “them” actually are, given no independent reporting on the ground. The point not addressed in the article is that Al Shabaab is not really much different in behavior and style from the Saudis, who are using cluster bombs to kill civilians and Shia Islamists in Yemen, with U.S. assistance and no sanctions, because they are “our allies.” They too want to spread their brand of intolerant Wahhabi Sunni Islam (into Yemen), wiping out all the heretics and establishing dictatorial control. However, Al Shabaab represents a piracy threat to oil tankers and other shipping moving through the Gulf of Aden on their way to the Red Sea, such as Saudi oil tankers, so they are ‘the enemy’ of the moment. Perhaps later they’ll be ‘our allies’ in some stupid proxy war against, I don’t know, Chinese interests in Africa? With a Saudi or Israeli or Egyptian cutout for the weapons supply train, as was done with U.S. support for the “moderate” ISIS in Syria recently. Come on, who can’t see it? Al Shabaab declared “moderate,” reformed with new leadership, our new ally in the War on Terror, sworn to stop the piracy in exchange for weapons and money, out to overthrow a pro-Chinese local government? Sounds like a Hillary Clinton or Dick Cheney project, doesn’t it? This is why we should stop viewing countries in the Middle East as “allies” – not the Saudis, not Israel, not Egypt, not Turkey, no more than we call Iran or Syria “allies” – they are all nothing more than problematic “acquaintances,” at best. craigsummers photosymbiosis “…….The point not addressed in the article is that Al Shabaab is not really much different in behavior and style from the Saudis, who are using cluster bombs to kill civilians and Shia Islamists in Yemen, with U.S. assistance and no sanctions, because they are “our allies.”….” You are really hung up on the Saudis. You supported the Russian bombing in Syria in which hundreds of people have been killed and thousands of refugees created. The Russians have bombed hospitals. It really makes little sense for you to complain about Saudi Arabia bombing the Houthis. “{……However, Al Shabaab represents a piracy threat to oil tankers and other shipping moving through the Gulf of Aden on their way to the Red Sea, such as Saudi oil tankers, so they are ‘the enemy’ of the moment,,,,” Yea, I hear that the Shabaab Navy is a threat to the US Fifth fleet. Don’t be fucking ridiculous, OK? “…….Come on, who can’t see it? Al Shabaab declared “moderate,” reformed with new leadership, our new ally in the War on Terror, sworn to stop the piracy in exchange for weapons and money, out to overthrow a pro-Chinese local government? Sounds like a Hillary Clinton or Dick Cheney project, doesn’t it?….” Sounds like you are making up a bunch of Bullshit. “…..This is why we should stop viewing countries in the Middle East as “allies” – not the Saudis, not Israel, not Egypt, not Turkey, no more than we call Iran or Syria “allies” – they are all nothing more than problematic “acquaintances,” at best……..” You are entitled to your opinion. Support what you want, but you are doomed to be completely wrong when it comes to US foreign policy. keith craigsummers Just because a nation has internal strife doesnt give the USA the right to label the side it dislikes as terrorists who deserve to die, and the side it favors as “moderate rebels” who we arm, train and pay to terrorize the people of Syria. The Kenya attack was another false flag just like 9/11, Paris, Boston, etc. The US government is evil, end of story. “The U.S. is not at war in Somalia. Congress has never declared war on Somalia….What legal authority does Obama even possess to bomb this country” Every year the State Department asks Congress funds to provide military assistance and operational support to AMISOM and the Somali forces. Every year Congress says yes and the president signs it into law. When the executive tells Congress what it wants to do and Congress says yes and gives the executive funds to do it, then the executive has the legal authorization to do it. Operational support in armed conflicts mean troops will more likely be deployed to the hot area and they will be targeted by the enemy of the armed forces they are supporting. So, although it is not clear whether US troops were really being targeted in that specific situation the bombing of those fighters was in accordance with US laws, International laws and many UN resolutions that strongly support AMISOM if indeed Al Shabab was about to attack AMISOM or US forces. I am not sure what legal argument Greenwald is attempting to present. Even if there was no UN resolution against Al Shabab, even if Congress never authorized military support for AMISOM or Somali forces, the US president could use the War Powers Act to justify that bombing. The president could simply say that US troops who were in a training mission with Somali forces were about to be attacked by Al Shabab. The bombing would still be legal under US and international laws. antodav Really the reason nobody cares is because the attacks are being carried out by drones, and thus no Americans are dying in the process. Even at the height of the Iraq War, the moral outrage on the left was never about the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who were dying, only about the 5000 or so Americans who died, who unlike the Iraqis, basically asked to be there by signing up to serve in the military in the first place. If these were indeed terrorists plotting an attack against American soil, then perhaps these strikes were justified…but everyone is innocent until proven guilty, even terrorists. And even then, they should have captured these terrorists, put them on trial, and locked them away some where other than Guantanamo Bay…not just killed them without due process. For that, we would at least need a declaration of war, but you can’t issue one of those against a non-state actor. Regardless, the left won’t care, because Obama can kill whomever he wants so long as they get their government-subsidized health care, abortions on demand, and gay marriage. rrheard And this sounds about right, and another reason I will not vote to put the Clinton’s back in the White House: The current level of hostility in US-Russian relations was caused in part by Washington’s contemptuous treatment of Moscow’s security concerns in the aftermath of the cold war, a former US defence secretary has said. William Perry, who was defence secretary in Bill Clinton’s administration from 1994 to 1997, . . . “Our first action that really set us off in a bad direction was when Nato started to expand, bringing in eastern European nations, some of them bordering Russia. At that time we were working closely with Russia and they were beginning to get used to the idea that Nato could be a friend rather than an enemy … but they were very uncomfortable about having Nato right up on their border and they made a strong appeal for us not to go ahead with that.” Perry said the decision reflected a contemptuous attitude among US officials towards the troubled former superpower. “It wasn’t that we listened to their argument and said he don’t agree with that argument,” he said. “Basically the people I was arguing with when I tried to put the Russian point … the response that I got was really: ‘Who cares what they think? They’re a third-rate power.’ And of course that point of view got across to the Russians as well. That was when we started sliding down that path.” http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/mar/09/russian-hostility-to-west-partly-caused-by-west craigsummers rrheard Of course, those countries that were formerly subjugated by the USSR rightly sought protection from Russia. Who can blame them for that? All you have to do is look at Ukraine to understand that those countries were right. Russia represented a tremendous threat even as they continue to wage a war in Ukraine after they stole the Crimea Peninsula. Catullus craigsummers Are you willing to see Americans killed over what flag flies over Kiev? Do you think that the Baltic republics are worth a nuclear war with Russia? craigsummers Catullus “…… Do you think that the Baltic republics are worth a nuclear war with Russia?….” No – but maybe you should direct that question to the aggressor in Ukraine (and that ain’t the US). dahoit Catullus Well when the crazy Americans and the crazy Russians kill each other off,Israel stands supreme!They have the Iron Dome! That’s all the clown cares about. Carolyn craigsummers rrheard Carolyn 100 to 1 says he’s in the same age cohort as Cheney. A lot of them are literally fucking nuts and totally brainwashed about America’s actual history and agenda. Same type of ahistorical super patriots that think America broke Germany’s back in WWII instead of Russia and learned US history from Time Life coffee table books. I’m hopeful the world will be a better place when some members of that generation shuffle of this mortal coil. Assuming we make it that long. rrheard rrheard Sheesh that was the mother of all typos: “. . . where the Reds are bent on world domination, [ ] the saviors of the world, the U.S., and the only thing thwarting that agenda is our willingness to bomb things from afar.” In any event not a well constructed sentence. @ Glenn http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/mar/09/america-cia-nsa-chief-general-michael-hayden-china-catastrophic-for-world I hope you take the time to read Michael Hayden’s book and blow the living crap out of it in your columns for months here. Nobody is begging for it worse than that guy. If there is anybody more full of shit I don’t know who it is–Kissinger? Cheney? Hillary Clinton? Michael Hayden is a full fledged “all-star” in the BS Leagues. Didn’t you give that guy all he could handle one night in a one-on-one debate a couple of years back? Robert Farrior They must all be removed from power and held accountable! robertsrevolution.net The AlQaeda affi?iated Al-Shabab has actually confirmed that it’s camp was attacked by US drones but they denied that 150 Jihadists were killed as claimed by the Americans. Marie Spike Thanks for this excellent piece and for all you do to uphold the torch of journalistic integrity in this polluted sea of deadly propaganda. Lin Ming Glenn, I hope you’re looking into this: “Pentagon admits it has deployed military spy drones over the U.S.” http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2016/03/09/pentagon-admits-has-deployed-military-spy-drones-over-us/81474702/ (I hear that Black Lives Matters is concerned too, so it should be okay to focus on this issue.) Nasser Allhathlan God chosen people are those who promot good doings in society and donstrate wrong doings of governments American journalists are so ignorant at times. East Africa nations are allies in the war against terror. Does the writer have proof that the trainees in that camp would not attack Americans or her allies? Sigh. You are a sorry excuse for a journalist. You are making accusations and trying to influence people without a shred of proof. Was that an article or a biased rant? Don’t you have a tree to hug somewhere? The writer is completely ignorant of what he writes about. Al-Shabab has pledged allegiance to Al-Qaeda. Al-Qaeda bombed the U.S. in 9/11 (or are the conspiracy theorists right that it wasn’t al-Qaeda behind the 9/11 attacks?). Al-Qaeda bombed the U.S. embassies in East Africa and killed many Americans. Alshabab killed Americans in the Westgate mall attack. So to write that U.S. is not at war with Alshabab is shocking! dahoit Gidi Oy!sheesh.The sheer audacity and chutzpah of the Zionists is one for the books. Yankee come home,the world will applaud,all except the zionists. JLocke What’s funny, to me anyway, is that even after the last raid, and this one: US special forces kill ‘high-profile target’ during al-Shabaab gun battle US officials say 10 insurgents were killed during night-time raid in Somalia but decline to reveal raid’s exact target, just days after airstrikes on al-Shabaab camp http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/mar/09/us-special-forces-al-shabaab-somalia …American TV presenters would express shock if there was a retaliatory attack. Imagine, if, somehow, some Somalis managed to kill some US soldiers in continental America, CNN, the entire media would be going ballistic about the attack…how did it happen?…how did they get in the country? What were their motives, what should we do to defend ourselves?…should we bomb Somalia? Clearly it hasn’t been bombed enough…perhaps send regular ground troops? Is Iran behind this, should we bomb Iran? It’s a hermetically sealed view of the world where military victory leads to status quo empire…and should there be a failure…it leads to status quo empire….until enough people that don’t profit from empire, including the African Americans in prison…and the Africans being bombed in Africa…wise up. By the way, didn’t “special forces” used to be called “death squads”? A death squad is an armed group that conducts extrajudicial killings or forced disappearances of persons for the purposes of political repression, genocide, or revolutionary terror. These killings are often conducted in ways meant to ensure the secrecy of the killers’ identities. Death squads may have the support of domestic or foreign governments (see state terrorism). S JLocke Hey, enough movies made about rapists calling them Knights of Night or something would somehow convince people that it’s totally cool and not at all sick JLocke JLocke Ah, here we are: Afghanistan war logs: Task Force 373 – special forces hunting top Taliban The Nato coalition in Afghanistan has been using an undisclosed “black” unit of special forces, Task Force 373, to hunt down targets for death or detention without trial. Details of more than 2,000 senior figures from the Taliban and al-Qaida are held on a “kill or capture” list, known as Jpel, the joint prioritised effects list. In many cases, the unit has set out to seize a target for internment, but in others it has simply killed them without attempting to capture. The logs reveal that TF 373 has also killed civilian men, women and children and even Afghan police officers who have strayed into its path. But before that, there was the now famous “Program Phoenix” The US Phoenix Program was a secret, large scale counter terrorist effort in Vietnam. Developed in 1967 by the CIA, the Phoenix Program, called Phung Hoang by the Vietnamese, aimed a concerted effort to “neutralize” the Vietcong Infrastructure (VCI) consisting of South Vietnamese civilians suspected of supporting North Vietnamese or Viet Cong soldiers. The euphemism “neutralize” meant to kill or detain indefinitely. Then CIA Director William Colby, while insisting in 1971 Congressional hearings that “the Phoenix program is not a program of assassination,” nonetheless conceded that Phoenix operations killed over 20,000 people between 1967 and 1972. [11] http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/07/19/assassination-nation/ Yes a counter “terrorist” operation in Vietnam….but don’t call it assassination!!! Just waiting for a Furgeson revamp of the U.S. police I was trying to find how the decision to, shower Somalia with American goodness was made…did Obama flip a coin? Six sided dice? Ouija board? Why did Somalis win the drone sweepstakes, why do they deserve all the democracy and human rights and prosperity that only the US military can bestow…. ….then I came across this: Guantanamo Bay is often portrayed as exceptional, a piece of hell located off American shores and outside American law. A place where humans could notoriously be tortured and abused because the rules usually constraining such violence were purposefully suspended. Certainly, there are many aspects of “justice” at Guantanamo that lie far beyond the pale: most egregiously, the prolonged indefinite detention of hundreds of men held without charge, the vast majority of whom were innocent. For many, Guantanamo Bay epitomizes all the problems with a “war on terror” that places some people outside the law, supposedly to save the rest of us from them. However, Guantanamo Bay is not as exceptional as we might like to imagine. Physical and psychological abuse are not restricted to spaces expelled from the normal American legal system. American prison brutality did not begin at Guantanamo, and will not end with its long-promised closure. On the contrary – in September 2015, Human Rights Watch warned that President Barack Obama’s plan to transfer Guantanamo detainees to super-maximum security prisons within the U.S. could actually worsen their conditions of detention. “Supermax conditions often include prolonged isolation that can lead to prisoners experiencing depression, despair, anxiety, rage, claustrophobia, hallucinations, problems with impulse control, and/or an impaired ability to think, concentrate, or remember,” according to a letter to Obama from HRW’s Executive Director Kenneth Roth. “Inmates have described life in a supermax as akin to living in a tomb.” https://www.thestar.com/opinion/commentary/2016/02/28/us-prison-brutality-will-not-end-with-guantanamo.html Anyway, I’m still looking for those heartfelt reasons the US government is bombing Somalia for its own good, even as America’s government seemingly couldn’t care less for their own citizens. cwradio These “terrorists” can’t be much of a threat if they’re stupid enough to stand out in the open to get bombed. Either al Shabaab is incompetent as a group or Obama just blew up another wedding party. Bo James Rather than just asking questions and providing no answers, I’d like to see an alternative scenario proposed. If these people WEREN’T al Shabaab militants, who were they? And why would the executive spend millions of dollars to see them bombed? See, in journalism simply bringing up a lack of information isn’t enough, you have to PROVIDE information as well. Until this is done, I’m inclined to believe that this was a strike againt al Shabaab militants. With the lack of any competing scenarios, it is the only view that really makes sense. Sometimes a story really is as simple as it appears. Tralala Bo James Well, here’s a scenario Bo, hope you enjoy it. It was the first space camp in Somalia, training for zero gravity and building stamina when their training was cut short by a big caboom, courtesy of Lockheed Martin and General Atomics Aeronautical Systems. Would you like additional scenarios while your government acts against any conventions and rules of war? ValkLeroux Bo James War is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength. You go, Bo James. Go on believing the party line. It makes so much ‘sense.’ Judge, jury and executioner. Fuck everything else. Fuck reason. What the fuck is reason? Us cunts from the US is above reason. We want your oil and resources, so why the fuck should we use reason. You go, Bo James. ‘It all makes perfect sense, expressed in dollars and cents, pounds shillings and pence.’ The US government and those it serves is the real enemy. dave Bo James Glenn has provided information: The government’s claims about who it kills in drone strikes have been repeatedly shown to be false, so we shouldn’t believe them. It’s not necessary for Glenn to say who the victims were for us to doubt the official story. On another note, I have this bridge in Brooklyn you might be interested in buying…. dahoit Bo James Humans are also as simple as they appear,Bo.sheesh. William Bednarz George Bush’s war on terror / or of terror GO ANYWHERE – KILL ANYONE…..NO BORDERS & NO REASONS GonzoI William Bednarz We’re in our 8th year of Obama’s administration expanding on the very same actions both his campaign and you criticize the Bush administration for. It happens again and again, regardless of who the two parties put in place. Notice how all the acts that enable this pass with bipartisan support, yet often with public outcry. Letting anyone convince you these are just the act of an individual, even a President, ignores the participation of both political parties. photosymbiosis On this: “3) Why does the U.S. have troops stationed in this part of Africa? Remember, even the Obama administration says it is not at war with al Shabaab.” According to the Washington Post: “There are more than 20,000 A.U. [African Union] troops in Somalia, drawn primarily from Uganda, Kenya, Burundi and Ethiopia. Their primary funder is the United States, which foots a large part of the bill for training and equipping the international force.” That doesn’t explain why we are backing this military effort, but notice it was “US Navy Captain Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman” who gave the press briefing – and if you look at Somalia’s position, i.e. the Gulf of Aden to the north, through which all the Arab Gulf oil transits on tankers through the Red Sea and the Suez canal to Europe, and consider the history of piracy in the region, then it becomes pretty obvious that the Navy is there to protect the oil shipping route, and the U.S. support for African Union troops in Somalia is part of that ongoing plan. Probably the drone attack, which included manned aircraft – was launched from US Navy ships in the Gulf of Aden. The overall rationale remains the same as its ever been – protecting the oil shipping routes, but neither the State Department nor the Pentagon nor the White House want to state that so plainly, so they call it ‘counter-terrorism’ – but it has little if anything to do with terrorism, everything to do with global economics. This doesn’t get discussed in the corporate press or television, no background allowed. Even if such military action is necessary to protect the shipping routes, the rationale, even if it apparently makes some kind of sense, must be hidden from the American people, because the Saudis and other Gulf Arabs are our ‘allies’ and they bank their oil money with Wall Street firms like Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan and Blackstone, and are the top buyer of weapons from Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrup, Raytheon, etc. and so we must spend billions to protect them – they just don’t want it to be a subject of discussion. The result is that most Americans are woefully ignorant of the fact that the U.S. spends hundreds of billions of dollars a year to protect global oil shipping routes on behalf of client states like Saudi Arabia and Qatar and Kuwait, states which curiously enough play central roles in exporting their radical Wahhabi Islamic ideology all over the world, where it is adopted by groups like Boko Haram in Nigeria or al-Shabaab in Somalia or ISIS in Syria or Al Qaeda in Pakistan or the Taliban in Afghanistan. The notion that this is all a big waste of American taxpayer dollars – that supporting such ‘allies’ in the Middle East is actually counter-productive, in the long run (just like the current proposed $1 billion increase in Israeli military aid) – is not a topic that the American establishment in Washington wants to see discussed. Clark photosymbiosis To question these killings would be to question the religion of “Free Market Capitalism” which is based upon the reduction of all of life to cheap “resources” in the name of the holy privatized monetary profits. Their lives would lose all meaning if they questioned their motivating love of monetary blessedness. The deaths and pollution are part of the externalized costs. They are not what is important to the necessary delusions inherent in the “american way of life.” The wild west is now global and if you are not a militarized corporate cowboy then you are an ” indian.” Ask Tecumseh or Black Hawk about the character of the capitalists. photosymbiosis Clark The notion of ‘capitalism’ is just to vague to explain the situation. After all, the ‘socialists’ like Hugo Chavez and his pal Colonel Gaddafi were just as greedy for the oil money as the ‘capitalists’ were; the absolute control of the only energy source was a source of power and social control for them too. Did they treat their people better? Maybe a little, but not much different, really. The same goes for the Soviet communists, who treated their satellite nations in Central Asia and Eastern Europe the same way the old European monarchist powers treated their colonial territories in Africa and the New Work and Asia, the same way the U.S. has treated the Middle East populations for decades – puppet dictators, client states, authoritarian repression, torture and murder. No, the specific solution to this particular issue is a global transition to energy sources that are not under the control of any one region, government, or cartel. The sun shines most everywhere, the wind blows just about everywhere, and with appropriate technology anyone can have their own power plant in their backyard with no need to rely on the Saudis or the Russians or the Venezuelans – and, bonus, no need to breathe filthy air or drink contaminated water. No need to spend billions protecting foreign oilfields, either. And global warming slows down a bit, too. So what’s the best method to build such a system? Communism, centrally controlled production? That was always an incompetent corrupt authoritarian disaster. Wall Street capitalism? Those greedy monkeys see more profits in controlling and measuring out fossil fuels than they do in putting renewable energy technology in everyone’s hands. How about locally controlled Silicon Valley-style innovation and manufacturing, instead? How about partnerships with countries with few fossil fuel reserves, i.e. no incentive to keep the fossil fuel control system going, countries like China and Germany and Japan and India, regardless of whether they call themselves capitalist or socialist or whatever? dahoit photosymbiosis Libya,before its destruction was the richest nation in Africa,Khaddafi reinvested the oil wealth,and statistics in Venezuela bear out the marked improvement of the poor in that country from socialism. Better than what exists everywhere else in Africa and most of Central and South America. Republicans suppress the vote…Democrats “are unprepared” for the vote. It’s not like this voting stuff was a scheduled thing, or that they know in advance how many are eligible, or that Sanders has boosted enthusiasm or anything like that!!! Several polling locations around Michigan ran out of ballots amid Tuesday’s primary elections, WZZM-TV reported. Officials attributed some of the ballot shortages to increased turnout. Polls around the state are scheduled to close at 9 p.m. EST. Although one precinct in Plainfield Township reported that Democratic ballots ran out due to a miscommunication with the Kent County clerk’s office causing them to be mistakenly delivered to another location. According to Think Progress, voters at a polling location in Flint had to wait for an hour or when Democratic primary ballots ran out, or choose to be notified at home when more ballots were available. https://www.rawstory.com/2016/03/michigan-voting-precincts-running-out-of-ballots-amid-high-turnout-reports/ Gee, cynicism and apathy may not be enough, let’s hold votes on a week day, when most people need to be at work or school, or better yet spring break when students are away, let’s make them wait in line for hours, that should dispense with the old and the infirm, then let’s tell them we are out of ballots… ….How explicit do you want the Democratic party to be, “Yes everybody, it’s fixed, we’re corrupt…can we all now please coronate Hillary?” Is it possible that Muslims voted overwhelmingly for Sanders because he’s the only candidate, in either the two main parties, with policy positions that appeal to them? Bernie Sanders Wins Big With Michigan Muslims — And Political Pundits Can’t Quite Believe It “Arabs, both Muslim and Christian, have long been targets of discriminatory anti-terrorism policies, and Sanders’ campaign has responded to these concerns better than anyone else. He even promoted his campaign platform of equality and dignity in Arabic,” said Amry. “We are also seeing, perhaps, a response to the Sanders’ campaign’s attack of corporate America. Michigan’s blue-collar Arab Americans are suffering economic challenges too, not just white blue-collar Americans.” Those economic challenges were some of the reasons Muslim voters in Michigan said they were pulling the lever for Sanders. Shiab Mussad, a 22-year-old recent college graduate from Dearborn, told the Detroit Free Press that he was impressed with Sanders’ passion about making college more affordable. He added that Sanders’ faith was not under consideration when he was deciding his vote. “He has a good foreign policy record,” said Mussad. “I support him because of his policies, not because of … his personal religion.” http://www.ibtimes.com/bernie-sanders-wins-big-michigan-muslims-political-pundits-cant-quite-believe-it-2333030 Baldie McEagle JLocke No, no, no. Democracy doesn’t work like that on the Left. Only on the Right. The Left is all identity politics. Actually one thing I recently realized is that to centrist Democrats, electing Trump will mean empowering racist fascists, wherever they are. But where Sanders is concerned, electing him won’t empower socialists. At least, that’s not what they say. What they say is that President Sanders will be weak and alone. President Trump strong, President Sanders weak. And this is from the mainstream Democrat wing of the media. Dreadlock Holmes I still can’t understand why it is still called ‘the Defence Department’, because I can’t remember the last time it was used in that capacity. Neither does rest of the world does see it as such begging the question: ‘is the U.S. it’s own worst enemy?’ ContinuousDeception Dreadlock Holmes Macroman Dreadlock Holmes It’s not called “the Defence Department.” It’s called the “Department of Defense.” In the U.K., it’s called the “Ministry of Defence.” It raises the question, it doesn’t beg it. “Begging the question” means something entirely different. dave Dreadlock Holmes Interesting you should point that out. During WWII, i.e. when there was a plausible “defense” mission, it was called the “war” department. Then after the war, when the US faced no credible military threat from anyone (remember: the USSR had yet to develop nuclear weapons and was completely devastated by the war), the name was changed to the “defense” department. (We spell “defense” differently here in the States.) I’m sure George Orwell understood completely. i agree with the liberal position of most of your readers. when governments ask us for help fighting forces attempting to impose Islamism, we must stay out of it. or when fascists are committing genocide, let’s just mind our own business. On the question of individual liberty, gender equality, freedom of expression, civil rights, humanism, secular government, and a right to life, liberty, and due process under the law, we should remain “neutral.” I mean, the only good things that ever came from liberalism are art, literature, music, science, reason, and education. As for the universality of human rights or the notion that all people regardless of gender, race, ethnicity or nationality, possess certain inalienable rights? it’s nonsense. We liberals gave up on these principles years ago. As liberals we also no longer believe in equality of the sexes, or standing up for women, homosexuals, or minorities. Well, unless it’s in our own country. Because women’s rights, equal rights, or civil rights are only for westerners. And if others espouse tyranny, theocracy, or genocide, so what? how does that prevent me from enjoying my iPhone and the military technology that created it? after all, we exist outside the political economy and it’s not our business to apply normative western standards of justice. And why is everyone always going on about freedom of expression and freedom of religion? We as liberals now support silencing those who express opinions and beliefs, or de-platforming them, if they disagree with us or if we don’t like their nationality, ethnic background, or religion. Israelis for example, should never be allowed to speak publicly and shouted down accordingly. I mean, unless they agree with us. As to military aggression, violence, murder or ethnic cleansing, we support that behavior as long as it’s carried out by the proper third world actor. otherwise, it’s simply western imperialism or colonialism. And who can’t but sympathize with the notion that violence and terror against innocents are legitimate political weapons? Sure, 1 million Jews and 10+ million Christians have been driven out and ethnically cleansed from most of the middle east who had lived there since well before the creation of Islam. But the only justice that matters is for the Palestinians. It’s really black and white. We used to believe in the rule of law and that all men are innocent until proven guilty. Now we support and sympathize with those who administer medieval justice, torture, and execute people in the public square without a fair trial. Sometimes you have to crack and egg to make a liberal omelet. Phooey on the old enlightenment principles, which value, above all, the importance of the individual and his or her quest for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Groups are now more important than individuals, and identity politics and political correctness more valuable to the human experience. -Mona- josh As liberals we also no longer believe in equality of the sexes, or standing up for women, homosexuals, or minorities. Well, unless it’s in our own country. Because women’s rights, equal rights, or civil rights are only for westerners. If you think everyone who more or less is a Greenwald fan would self-identify as a “liberal” you’d be wrong. Some are leftists, others are libertarian. Moreover, a disingenuous concern for women’s rights, or gay rights, underpins a good deal of the West’s militaristic, colonialist war-mongering and support for the apartheid state of Israel. Westerners do not properly use bullets and bombs to bring Muslim countries and cultures “up to speed” on our Enlightenment values. Indeed, we should be reflecting a good deal more on whether those values support the atrocities and inequities we have imposed all over the world. Women in Muslim countries can do feminism themselves without being told how to do it, or bombed into doing it, by white Westerners. Kbhudson You will not question the liberal establishment. You will not ever ask Mr. Obama why. If he says the drone killed terrorists then the drone killed terrorists. The media would never take sides and purposefully neglect to ask any questions. How dare you make inquiries into the government’s business. You should be ashamed of yourself. Where do u get off acting like you’re a citizen in a country with freedom of the press and freedom of speech. Rest assured that none of those killed in the drone strike were black. If they were then you could ask questions and make sure everything was done properly and legally. Because black lives matter and Obama is black so of course he wouldn’t condone the drone strike death of any black person. ..come on. It’s definitely true that people, especially the media, get excited with Obama, the Clintons and Bushes and rally behind the leader. War provides an almost sexual release and gives meaning to their otherwise boring lives. However, that’s not where the energy for a movement is going to come from. Being a soldier is a way to make a living in the US, as well as getting citizenship. This is why it’s important not to just show that war is immoral, but to provide an alternative. We need an exit strategy for our soldiers. On a pragmatic level, it’s not enough to make overtures to peace and justice. JLocke Lewis – “We need an exit strategy for our soldiers.” and gun assembly workers, missile builders…and prison guards. Michelle Alexander is a compelling speaker on ending mass incarceration. Unbelievable statistics about how many millions of prisoners would be released, how man prison guards would be out of a job, how many prisons would close, and all their support industries in the towns where they are located that would be affected…. If America returned to pre-Clinton incarceration levels. Michelle Alexander: “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eH0EcN-Sln0 But what to do with all those soldiers that have nowhere to invade? All those prisoners and prison guards looking for work…what to do?…what to do about it??? The case for infrastructure spending – now Suppose your house needs a new roof, and the interest rate on the loan you require to get the work done is extraordinarily low — but expected to rise in the future. In addition, construction work has been slow in the area, meaning labor and other costs are at bargain rates for the time being. Should you get the work done now or wait until later when it might cost quite a bit more? That’s the situation the U.S. now faces over infrastructure spending. The nation has considerable needs for bolstering its infrastructure, interest rates remain ultralow but are expected to rise in the future, and the costs for labor and raw materials are below normal due to the slow recovery from the Great Recession but are likely to increase over time. Why wait to do the work? http://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-case-for-infrastructure-spending/ It’s freaking me out that “Benito Mussolini” isn’t sounding fascist at all today. Doesn’t he owe it to us to remain satirical??? Anon JLocke JLocke – I posted this yesterday so sorry for the re-post, but as your missing Bernito, and in need of some US Government/fascist satire I hope that it will serve to satisfy until the master of satire Benito returns : Hey guys, let’s get things straight here !- everyone that the US Government murders by drone attacks, missiles, or bombs is either a terrorist, or a person who would have gone on to commit a future act of terrorism. Even if they were just civilians gathered together at a wedding, or funeral they could still have posed an imminent threat to the United States.!They may even have had weapons of mass destruction !Besides, their deaths are valuable, since they can be labelled by the US propaganda media as terrorists, to help justify, self perpetuate and even escalate the war on terror. Expanding the killing fields, and creating more people who wish to seek revenge for the murder of their innocent family members, including women and children is great for business. Killing civilians is also better than risking the possibility of them becoming future war refugees and migrants, as this would drain precious US and it’s allies in Europe’s resources which could otherwise be used for future spending on military contractors, and the arms industry. The US Government has assured everyone of its commitment to be precise in its targeting, so this should be all the assurance and comfort needed for civilians of the World everywhere, and if one day a relative or friend is accidentally killed then you should accept that they must have been a secret terrorist or you should just forgive and forget the loss as it was obviously unintentional “collateral damage”. Why should the US Government have to provide names of its drone kill victims or any further information to the public, or Human Rights groups ,as such transparency would lead to the threat of being held accountable, and even, God forbid, a risk of war crime accusations arising – right ?????? JLocke Anon Not much in the American press about the real US strategy in Somalia (as opposed to the piles of articles about “fighting terrorism”) but Benito pointed to two obvious goals, the oil reserves and of course the shipping lanes offshore: Somalia may pay 90% of oil revenue to explorer under draft deal NAIROBI (Bloomberg) — Soma Oil & Gas Holdings Ltd., chaired by former U.K. Conservative Party leader Michael Howard, has proposed a deal with the Somali government that may grant it as much as 90% of the country’s prospective oil revenue. A draft production-sharing agreement, obtained by Bloomberg from an official close to the negotiations, sets the state’s share of revenue on the first 25,000 bopd at 10% if found at a depth of greater than 1,000 m and when oil costs less than $70 a barrel. If output exceeds 150,000 bbl, Somalia’s take rises to 30%. Crude for delivery in June fell 0.4 percent to $57.30/bbl at 4:45 p.m. in London on Thursday. Any deal with Somalia will include terms that are “fair and balanced” and reflect those signed in other high-risk, offshore oil and gas jurisdictions, Chief Executive Officer Robert Sheppard said in an e-mailed response to questions on May 27. “The proposals being discussed are in line with current industry standards.” Somalia is trying to attract investors to help rebuild its economy after African Union-backed government forces regained control of parts of its central and southern region seized by al-Shabaab in an insurgency that began in 2006. The Horn of Africa nation is scheduled to hold a general election in 2016, the first since 1967, according to the Heritage Institute, a Mogadishu-based research organization. Oil and gas output may start by 2020 after exploration work showed the potential for “huge” offshore deposits, former Petroleum Minister Da’ud Mohamed Omar said in February. http://www.worldoil.com/news/2015/5/28/somalia-may-pay-90-of-oil-revenue-to-explorer-under-draft-deal You are right to draw attention to the real US strategy in Somalia. I was aware about the Soma Oil and Gas Holdings limited proposed deal and that the company is chaired by the former Conservative Party leader, Michael Howard. Cage Uk also drew attention to this when David Cameron made the announcement that British troops were going to be sent to Somalia. The Cage website also published reports on mass rendition being carried out in Somalia and about Gitmo style secret prison camps there. The War on Terror continues to be great business and very profitable for the elite rulers of Governments – their Corporations including oil companies, arms manufacturers, private contractors have all made bumper profits as reported by The Intercept. It’s all really about Imperialism, and greed – killing, and expanding the killing fields will never ring about peace. Whilst money and Corporate lobbying control and dictate political and foreign policy decisions the killing will never stop. Western Governments these days are elected by the public but work to fulfill the agenda of a few very powerful elite people, and their powerful Global Corporations and Financial institutions. Unfortunately democracy is dead and the only hope perhaps is for new crowd funded political parties to rise that are funded differently. ContinuousDeception JLocke Yes he does; esp. after reading your well written post beginning with “The U.S. is not at war in Somalia”. How does one influence a fascist dictator to behave according to TIs vox populi? hmmm “The U.S. is not at war in Somalia” I guess this has two elements. The first one is the formal…”there has been no declaration of war”. Times change, some constitutional elements are written. Some are unwritten. America has gotten old enough to move into the unwritten stage. Government after American government has observed the practice of going to war without a formal declaration. Every nation has their own particular paperwork to fill out when going to war. That the American war dance has changed, is a transitory, bureaucratic, non-transferable, foot-note. It’s a change that has been forced upon a country that has full time military operations all over the world around the clock. The decision to be such a world occupation force was made long ago, and now it would be as unreasonable for Obama to declare war before attacking Somalia, as it would be for the Allies to declare war on Normandy on the eve of D-Day. Once you have made the decision to conduct a world war….bases, fighting on many continents…it would be impractical to “declare war” on a strike by strike basis, or even on a campaign by campaign basis. Maybe the more effective argument, and grounded in human reality is the point that the US is without democratic input, picking and choosing allies and enemies in foreign civil wars, and framing it as: “We aren’t attacking Somalia…..we are attacking Al Shabaab”, “We aren’t attacking Afghanistan…we are attacking the Taliban…etc” I think the American public, given the right media attention, might be able to grasp that. Try turning the tables …Try to get them to consider the shoe on the other foot:”hey, Al Qaeda didn’t attack America, it just attacked some New Yorkers…the rest of you stay out of it!!!” There’s of course all the implications of the most powerful countries bringing the end to the era of national sovereignty…America picking sides in Africa, Russia protecting groups in Ukraine…someday China may decide to liberate Chinatown in New York…. And while we wait for that, we are forced to listen to John Kerry lecture the Syrians on human rights. If the past, current, and perhaps future US presidents find it legal to commit war crimes….why should tiny Syria, in a desperate civil war, be held to a different standard. If a president Trump finds it necessary to waterboard…If superpower president Obama finds it necessary to lob bombs 5000 miles away at a poor African country….what humanity can we expect from Syria’s Assad? This is another example of how (the lie of) “Free Market Capitalism” operates as it reduces all of life to “resources” within the “transactions” wherein there are no real values assigned and everything is measured through manufactured/manipulated monetary profits. What you or I might call people are now “human resources” and we are supposed to ignore the idea that there are individual differences. To the church of the “Free Markets” we are all predators and the biggest predators are seen as the most honorable. I’m just commenting here at the top so what charliethreeee said isn’t the first thing newcomers see when they open this thread. charliethreeee See, there’s three kinds of people: dicks, pussies, and assholes. Pussies think everyone can get along, and dicks just want to fuck all the time without thinking it through. But then you got your assholes, Chuck. And all the assholes want us to shit all over everything! So, pussies may get mad at dicks once in a while, because pussies get fucked by dicks. But dicks also fuck assholes, Chuck. And if they didn’t fuck the assholes, you know what you’d get? You’d get your dick and your pussy all covered in shit! dhinds Fear, ignorance, detachment and war profiteering have become the cornerstones of a foreign policy designed to guarantee no shortage of opposing elements that seem to add credence to those philosophic, perceptual and identity errors of judgment used to justify the existence of same. This much IS known about the results of the Drone Program for “targeted” assassinations with no Due Process: Multiple Wedding Parties and Meetings of Village Elders have been eradicated with surgical accuracy but neither accountability nor moral authority. In view of these indisputable facts, the solution is unlikely to arise from those responsible for the present course but rather, another type of change (already supported by the current and past administrations): That of Regime. bahhummingbug dhinds I’ve always thought Bernie Sanders message should be “Regime-Change We Can Believe In”. I skimmed the original article title when writing exams. I read the articles today and found little to no media awareness on this relative to the time that’s gone by and the magnitude of the actions. I hate to say it, but its becoming more and more standardized. Drone strikes can kill 100s of people and since drones are new tech it was sensationalized to allow shady policy to fly under the noses of blind US citizens. Now look at its intended purpose. I remember that in the popular call of duty video games, drone strikes are used as an active point mechanism players would pursue to kill their enemies faster. This video game was played by millions of kids. Now any male of militant age is paying the consequences. It’s even more frightening to note continuing lack of transparency the US gov’t provides. And especially the lack of knowledge and blind following people have, like it’s as simple as a video game. Thank you for this work. stephan white Mr. Greenwald, what can we do? truth&Freedom stephan white He has answered that question many times: Do not send troops in the Middle East or Africa… to fight terrorist groups and those terrorist groups would leave us alone. Have you noticed that countries that never send troops overseas to fight those groups have never faced terrorist attacks? Argentina, and Indonesia are ones of the perfect examples. Al Gil truth&Freedom Right, because the 1994 AMIA Buenos Aires Bombings and the 2002 Bali Attacks were so clearly not terrorist attacks. Not sure where you are getting this warped sense of reality. Truth&Freedom Al Gil Finally somebody got it! Mister truth&Freedom Jamal Osman in The Guardian explains why meddling in Somalia risks making al-shabaab stronger: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/oct/01/britain-meddles-somalia-peril dhinds stephan white Vote for candidates committed to bringing ALL of the troops home, now. charliethreeee stephan white Pray that future generations figure out a way to solve a problem that we failed to solve. The internet can give us some hope for now. Young people are supporting Bernie in droves… hopefully that is a trend. -Mona- charliethreeee Young people are supporting Bernie in droves… hopefully that is a trend. Thanks to my fellow, young Michiganders we pulled it off for Bernie last night. Indeed, young blacks caused the African-American vote in Michigan to give Bernie 30% — almost all of them young. Turn out in MI was unprecedented — many polling stations ran out of Democratic ballots. That’s because 18-24 turned out in numbers as great as over 65. Most wonderfully, every fucking poll was wrong — Hillary was supposed to be leading by double digits. LOLOLOL bahhummingbug @ Mona. Grasping at straws, perhaps the answer lies behind door number #3 UEA (Unitary Executive Authority)? I think this is the legal theory Obama used in Libya … which evidently ‘trumped’ (pun>?) Congress’ express prohibition for involvement in Libya. also, not sure I have any confidence what-so-ever in Congress exercising its Art. I constitutional authority: Congress is unable to even agree on a SCOTUS (too busy w/ the horse race) … much less on matters of lethal force used around the world? #whatwouldtheBerndo? @ Craig (the un-colon); if, as you say, the US has the moral [and legal] authority to unilaterally kill alleged ‘terrorists’ in, say, Somalia does the US have that same authority in … Russia, China, N. Korea, Pakistan, France, England, Israel (notice, these are known nuclear powers)? Or anywhere else, willy-nilly, around the world? [”Finally, the US rightly targeted the Kenyan terrorist organization responsible for brutal attacks on civilian targets:”] #whatwouldTrumpdo? craigsummers bahhummingbug “……[email protected] Craig (the un-colon); if, as you say, the US has the moral [and legal] authority to unilaterally kill alleged ‘terrorists’ in, say, Somalia does the US have that same authority in … Russia, China, N. Korea, Pakistan, France, England, Israel (notice, these are known nuclear powers)? Or anywhere else, willy-nilly, around the world?……” (more like the un-colonoscopy) The US strategy under President Obama is to increasing provide assistance to countries in the fight against terrorists like Shish-Kabob (Somalia) – and despite Pakistan possessing nuclear weapons, the US has been bombing terrorists in that country for several years. The US attack on the terrorist training facility in Somalia was a cooperative effort (probably not unilateral). Obviously, the US cannot waltz into China, Russia, North Korea etc. and start bombing terrorists. Usually these countries work with the US in the WOT (except N. Korea). China and Russia already crack down on their own populations to fight terrorism (Ughirs, Chechens, for example). France, Germany, England (the EU) cooperate with US intelligence. Who really knows what Trump would do? Initially he would probably just sustain the policies of the Obama Administration before formulating his own policies. I suspect he would aggressively carry out the WOT. bahhummingbug craigsummers Ah (more like the un-colonoscopy) … I have no cure for one sick of un-colonoscopy, Craig! i am merely a gazelle wandering in the desert of love … but I have heard an ‘un-examined’ colon is not worth having? >”The US strategy under President Obama is to increasing provide assistance to countries in the fight against terrorists like Shish-Kabob (Somalia) –” Well, see, there’s the problem right there, Craig! Obama is killing the wrong terrorists Shish-Kabobs. The terrorists killed were Al-Shabaab. I think it’s important to at least know the name of the terrorist organization, if not the identities, of people we are at war with, don’t you? >”Obviously, the US cannot waltz into China, Russia, North Korea etc. and start bombing terrorists.” Obviously… now snatch the pebble from my hand. ps.Trump!? … at least with Trump the GWOT would become “Trump’s GWOT” (if there is any money in it)! March 9 2016, 11:09 a.m. Imagine if Russia had done this? The moment I saw the official, I knew I needed alternate source of info in the next second. Isn’t it surprising how people don’t raise up questions anymore? Where are the 5W+1H? aletheianoesis March 9 2016, 9:06 a.m. There is a new bill in there the president of USA is authorisied to declare war without any approval of congress. The president could declare war at once. This bill was passed from congress about the the time president G.W. Bush leaved office. I was afraid that Obama would use this new law and hope he would not used this law. But this law is justifing all war actions of the US-president. I was alerted of this law on a government watch web site. I cant remember the name and number of this bill. Brilliant assessment. It’s a valid point, and very well stated. I agree the media is malleable, and the public is pacified, but I might have said “paid for” and “brainwashed.” truth&Freedom The idiot has spoken: “Please peeps, ignore the troll truth&Freedom It takes over the threads, posting voluminous insults, name-calling and inanity. It’s been kicked out of here before under different monikers. To engage is to help it do it’s disruptive thing.” Mona As If I care about whether you or others even read my comments. I call you an idiot because you are an idiot. You insult Craig because you believe he is an “authoritarian” and a “Zionist”. In your case, it is not a belief, it is not an insult. It is a fact: you are an idiot: “You’re evading the question: The government is not claiming the AUMF authorizes this. So, what does?” Mona Even if there was no such thing as AUMF. The government is authorized to use force against anybody that is about attack its troops. That is called self defense. Whether or not they were about to attack US troops is not clear, but the point is that you are idiot to even ask that question. “Why do we have troops in Somalia in a position to be attacked? What is the authority for this?” Really? This why I call you a idiot. This is the authority: United States Congress S.1745 November 20, 2013 “The United States should: “continue to support African-led regional efforts to improve security and stability in Somalia, including through the African Union Mission to Somalia (AMISOM) and the United Nations Assistance Mission in Somalia (UNSOM);” ” carry out all diplomatic, economic, intelligence, MILITARY, and development activities in Somalia within the context of a comprehensive strategy coordinated through an interagency process.” By any means feel free to ignore my comments. I do not care. This is a public comment section and I just demonstrate again that you are an idiot. ValkLeroux truth&Freedom The US forces are there for only one reason and one reason only. Nothing to do with improving the the security and stabilisation of Somalia. If you believe that, one can call you an idiot, but insults helps nobody. The US government is in service of the Plutocracy. Resources and the free flow of resources is all they care for. Human rights is not anywhere in their list of priorities. truth&Freedom ValkLeroux You can believe whatever you want. You can even believe they are there to play star wars. Greenwald and his stupid followers ask the LEGAL ground that justify their presence in Somalia. Congress provided that legal ground. The best thing for you to do now is to ignore Congress text S.1745 on November, 2013 that authorized the president to provide military assistance to Somalia and keep repeating Greenwald’s distorted argument. Snowballinhell truth&Freedom So all you need is congressional approval to send your troops to other countries now is it? That satisfies your sense of legality? Believe it or not the rest of the world would rather your American troops stay at home thanks. We all know what “stability” means coming from the US government, even if you do not. Terrence truth&Freedom Actually, he asked for evidence that proves the 150 were terrorists who were going to harm U. S. troops. Who says they were? Was there an undercover agent on the ground? Were they able to capture video of each of the people conspiring to do so? Do they have audio? Were papers or electronic communications intercepted that point directly to the 150 and their plan to attack US troops? Or did someone with a grudge against whoever these people were just get them killed as an act of revenge? Were their activities interfering with business? How many killed were civilians? If we have troops there to keep the peace, why is a group of 150 terrorists able to go through an entire training course to the point of graduation? And if we have troops there to fight, why the drones? What are these troops doing? Torbjorn truth&Freedom https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/113/s1745 Died in a previous Congress This bill was introduced on November 20, 2013, in a previous session of Congress, but was not enacted. That seems to make Greenwald correct and you incorrect? truth&Freedom Torbjorn You are correct. This bill was not enacted. Now read the bill again. Are you done? Now read what the State Department request to Congress FY 2014 for peacekeeping activities. That request used the same language of s1745 and even provided details on what the US military will do: http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/208290.pdf “FY 2014 funds will be used to continue voluntary support to AMISOM, including training and advisory services…to provide OPERATIONAL support to Somali security forces” This was the law enacted by the United States Congress and signed by the president of the United States: “Provided further, That of the funds available for obligation under this heading in this Act and in prior Acts making appropriations for the Department of State, foreign operations, and related programs, up to $194,000,000 may be used to pay assessed expenses of international peacekeeping activities in Somalia.” https://www.congress.gov/bill/113th-congress/house-bill/3547/text This is the State Department request 2015: “The FY 2015 Peacekeeping Operations (PKO) Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) request of $115 million will support programming related to Somalia. FY 2015 funds will be used to continue voluntary support to the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM), including training…Accordingly, PKO funds will also be used to… provide logistical, operational…support to Somali military forces” This is the bill enacted by Congress and signed into law by the president of the United States: https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-114hr2029enr/html/BILLS-114hr2029enr.htm “Provided further, That funds available for obligation under this heading in this Act may be used to pay assessed expenses of international peacekeeping activities in Somalia” Every year the State Department uses the same language of text s1745. It tells the US Congress it needs money to provide logistical and OPERATIONAL support to AMISOM and Somali Forces. Every year Congress says yes, provides all the funds necessary and the president signs it into law. Not only does Congress give the executive the authority to support AMISOM and Somali forces in their operations. It also gives the executive the funds it requests for the mission. If you tell Congress you want to provide operational military support to an armed group and you want money for it and Congress say yes and gives you money for it, that means Congress is authorizing you to provide operational military support for that group. The only idiot here is you, and your repetitive use of the word is ” idiot ” is boring and establishes that you have a limited vocabulary and this is a trait of poorly educated person with limited brain power. Unfortunately you are also the worst type of idiot as like Craig Summers you are an authoritarian, and as narrow minded as the right wing, war criminal, nut jobs that now rule the United States. truth&Freedom Mister The question: Me: “United States Congress S.1745 November 20, 2013″ (Somalia Stabilization Act 2013) You: “You have a limited vocabulary and this is a trait of poorly educated person…war criminal…” The question asked by Mona has been properly answered. However, due to your high level of mental retardation which precludes your ability to examine critically the matter in hand, you can only provide an answer that strongly supports the argument that you are a fool. As a favor, I would not use the term idiot to describe you. Based on your answer the word numskull fits you well. You know what you and those who authorized the president can do. Those who think the president or any American have the power to do what the fuck they want in Somalia? You can go fuck yourself. I piss on text S.1745. Fuck you to the end of days, you arrogant piece of shit. -Mona- ValkLeroux I piss on text S.1745. Amusingly, the thing is still languishing in committee and was never passed. And even if it had, it was not an authorization to bomb Somalia or send troops there. ValkLeroux -Mona- Yes, I’ve seen Bodhi’s post where he pointed it out. Just incredible that ‘truth&Freedom’ thinks that just because Congress authorise something, that that then suddenly becomes written in stone. That we should care or respect that. He must be fucking living in Never Never land. Stupid arsehole. truth&Freedom -Mona- Actually you are right. That bill was not passed into laws. The public laws proposed by the State Department, voted by Congress and signed by the president contain the same language of s1745, but it provides more details about what the military will do in Somalia. According to Mona even when Congress gives the executive money to provide OPERATIONAL assistance to a military it is not an authorization to help that military target its enemies or even to send troops to provide that assistance. -Mona- -Mona- It’s pretty amusing that a troll who rants all over the threads calling everyone “idiot” and “dumb ass” cites a failed bill as authorization for military action — or for anything else. The fookin thing was never made law. Oh yes I am willing to be called an idiot for not properly check the status of that bill. That is fair to call me an idiot for picking the bill that was not enacted as opposed to the laws that were enacted and that stated the same thing in that bill with regards to the use of the military. But I will still call you an idiot. Why? The lawyer you are 1) Continuously state Obama has no authorization to send troops to Somalia while Congress passed laws that specifically authorize him to provide military operational support to AMISOM and Somali Forces. 2)Continuously state the US Constitution and Congress rights to declare war as if this is the only case in which the US president can use force against armed groups 3) Does not know the difference when a bill is “failed” (rejected by Congress) and when the main points of that same bill is re packaged in other bills, which in that case became laws. Even when you had the best opportunity to prove that I am a “dumb ass”, the best you could do was to pinpoint that bill which was not enacted as opposed to the following bills: H.R 3546, H.R 2029 which contain similar language with bill 1745 specifically with regards to the use of the military in Somalia. (PS I never call anybody dumb ass here. You are the one who called me a dumb ass while really only a dumb ass would state Congress has not authorized the US executive to send troops to Somalia while there is a law stating the executive ought to provide military operational support to Somali forces. Anon truth&Freedom Where is your proof that the victims from the drone attack were about to attack US troops ? Do you really believe that by carrying out summary executions, and often killing many civilians the US will improve “security and stability in Somalia, or for that matter any other country that the USA has attacked? Whats your view on the slaughter of over 200,000 civilians in Iraq – mass slaughter based on lies about non existent weapons of mass destruction. What legal authority does the US Government have to carry out renditions, torture of prisoners, and to setup covert Guantanamo style prisons in Somalia : http://www.cageuk.org/publication/inside-africas-war-terror or to commit mass rendition : http://www.cageuk.org/publication/mass-rendition-incommunicado-detention-and-possible-torture-foreign-nationals-kenya-soma Further to educate you a little more and to help you learn that military attacks and interventions in Somalia will not improve security, or stability, and is unlikely to improve anything. Here is an article published in The Guardian that explains how decisions made by colonial rulers have affected Somalia to this day : Bodhi truth&Freedom truth&Freedom “As If I care about whether you or others even read my comments.” Then why do you bother to post? Are you so enamored of your own words that you post merely to see them in print? What a loser. Truth&Freedom Bodhi Of I am in love with my words! @truth&Freedom “‘Why do we have troops in Somalia in a position to be attacked? What is the authority for this?’ This is the authority: United States Congress S.1745 November 20, 2013″ You might want to consider this before you go spouting off about how people are idiots: This bill was introduced on November 20, 2013, in a previous session of Congress, but was not enacted” Indeed, I could find no record of this even coming to a vote. I place this here, not for you, but for others so they won’t be mislead by your version of “truth.” So you are correct, that bill was not enacted. The public laws proposed by the State Department, voted by Congress and signed by the president contain the same language of s1745, but it provides more details about what the military will do in Somalia. Ben Stuplisberger truth&Freedom This bill appropriates the funds, but does it provide legal authority? Those are two different principles. Of one thing I can be certain. If I’m not prepared to stand up for other peoples human rights, I can know for sure that the government will not respect my human rights. In fact, they bargain on us not giving a shit about other peoples human rights. They prefer that we believe their propaganda and lies. pwlg It appears the manufacturing of terrorists continues to be a thriving industry in the U.S. Gives real meaning to the phrase, “Made in the U.S.A. Nobody seems capable of putting themselves in these peoples shoes. More than willing to scream that they live in the ‘free’ world and blah blah blah about human rights, but when it comes to something like this, where people are found guilty and executed without any form of trial, they think they deserve it. WTF? Nobody deserve to be executed on the basis that you might be an threat or that you are a potential terrorist. What fucking world does this people live in? Imagine me walking into their houses and start killing them just because the possibility exist that the US might invade my country? Isn’t it exactly the same thing they blame terrorist for? The US government and the industrialist whose interest it serves is the true terrorist of this world. Fucking fascist that use fearmongering and warmongering for their own interest and nothing else. It’s definitely not that they made the world a safer place through their actions. The only thing they’ve accomplished for themselves is to make sure that the proletariat always live in a state of perpetual war. altohone ValkLeroux I am reminded of the “capability” argument the anti-Iran crowd loves to use. I could disassemble my house and use the lumber to build a catapult. So I am catapult capable. I don’t have a catapult. The material is not currently available for construction of a catapult. I’ve never built a catapult. I’ve never tested a catapult. My theoretical catapult couldn’t hit my neighbors house. But I am catapult capable and thus a threat, and they could justifiably bomb me in their eyes. In other words, reason doesn’t matter to them. They have an agenda and will find a justification for it. So what if they were about to attack the U.S. invaders? The U.S. military has no business being in that or any other part of the world. Jeff Jeff My namesake, you guys live far away, far removed from the direct impact and effects of al-shabaab’s murderous activities that we deal with regularly. The events a few days ago that are the subject of this article, before you folks read about them in the international media, were already grapevine fodder in Somali Diaspora’s social networks. It wasn’t news, and no one was weeping! Abdi I don’t agree with killing people that are 1000s of miles away unless congress allows it and even if it did, it should be up for review every year since we are talking about lives of humans. Now, the condition should also be that they are about to kill others for sure and there is a proof – this is my general view. Now, as an American Muslim, just don’t F/ing blame us muslims living in the west when some object to the ‘killing policy” and seek to revenge for their losses any means necessary when we are going around and killing them and also SUPPORTing their oppressors whether dictators or Israel. William W Haywood I am surprised that everyone still does not see what a horribly dystopian situation they are living in right now! If you still trust the information you are getting then you are insane, and have been fully absorbed into this dystopian mindset! Stand in the mirror and absorb your own govspeak! How can you tell if the information you are using is actually factual? Inspect your mind! Reto William W Haywood Completely agree. But, apart from the usual trolls, the people who had their brains washed do not even read this excellent blog. What needs to happen for that to change? How do you reach a person that is deaf and blind? Inside Africa’s War on Terror Cage UK : Also : “Britain’s War in East Africa” Cage UK Thursday 3rd March : http://www.cageuk.org/article/britains-war-east-africa Also – Jamal Osman in The Guardian explains how decisions taken by British colonial rulers have affected Somalis : Mr Greenwald says the US is not at war with Somalia, but take a look at this brief video in which General Wesley Clark exposes the Bush Administration’s plan to attack 7 Muslim countries in 5 years. The timetable was a bit off, but the targets are the same. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUZSS-REaKY Gestahl Shafiq I imagine that was the Pentagon’s plan, they probably didn’t give Bush much say in the matter. Empire requires long-term strategy, 4-8 year presidents are not, in practice, trusted with this authority. After all, Kennedy completely ruined Operation Northwoods.. I think what the U.S. does now and has been since couching everything in the name of fighting Al Qaida is any opposition group (insurgency) that is violently trying to overthrow the often corrupt leadership of a country who are vassal clients of the DC gang, we essentially become the assassins for that client state. All of which is illegal. Obama has cemented the idea that the U.S. President is an imperial dictator over the planet. It is only going to get worse as other major powers (China, Russia, and India) stand up to this outrageous behavior. Glenn – may I make a humble suggestion? For the Intercept? That you start reporting the fact that so-called “terrorism” is better understood as guerilla warfare against Imperialistic powers: WayBackMachine 2013 Exclusive: “Western oil exploration in Somalia may spark conflict – U.N. report” http://www.reuters.com/article/us-somalia-oil-un-idUSBRE96G06R20130717 Once President Trump and/or Clinton is elected, the window for reporting such things may close. Jeff JustMe The terms “terrorism” and “terrorist” have no legitimacy. They are propaganda terms, used to justify whatever horrors the namer wishes to inflict on those so named. As I told people shortly after 911, I don’t recognize or honor those terms. If you have a problem with someone or some activity, articulate it. Calling someone a terrorist is no more meaningful than calling them an asshole. charliethreeee JustMe Your suggestion makes zero sense. If GG had a goal of getting more people to agree with the concepts he writes about, he would likely have to avoid using words like imperialistic. People who already use that word already understand GG. Also, neither Trump nor HRC will eliminate the free press. What makes you think he needs to be better understood? The dude is a journalistic rock star. Wars Waldo Its going to be interesting to see how the drone argument develops over the next two decades. Every time you enter a new stage of of military technology, new questions of ethics and legality arise. War is inherently inhumane, and civilian casualties are, unfortunately, an inherent, grotesque part of warfare; this is not a rationalization for their occurrence, simply an indisputable observation of the nature of the beast. Wile I am in no means a proponent of war over diplomacy, or for the continuation of a military-industrial complex that seeks to further engineer unstable arms races, I don’t see how drones are any more unethical than previous methods of engagement by the US military. Its efficacy, in its beginning stages, has proven undoubtedly questionable, but so was dumping bombs from airplanes until laser-guided technology advanced, which, unfortunately didn’t prevent collateral damage from happening either. Did we know exactly who we were bombing during all the proxies wars of the cold war in SE Asian, killing millions of “communists,” yesteryear’s “terrorist”? Does the geographical proximity of the person pushing the button from a base, rather than inside a plane, really change the ethical dynamics of civilian casualties? Would the fact that a nuclear missile launch, to make an extreme analogy, be any less barbaric now because its done by punching in a code instead of released by plane? Moreover, the reason you are seeing secret military bases pop all over Africa is to address this very issue of failed efficacy, as well as, to not repeat the same mistake we caused, then underestimated, in ISIS with Boko Haram, which is statistically an even deadlier group. Al shabaab may not have pledged their allegiance to ISIS, as boko haram has, but the Nairobi massacre and their other continued attacks should leave no doubt as to their intentions. The faster you are able to deploy drones based on ground-intelligence and up to the minute satellite imagery, the more confident you can be of its reliability and accuracy. That being said, these improvements in process, for lack of better phrase, will also not be a vanguard for collateral-less drone strikes; war will always be full of unintended consequences. I don’t agree with Americas overwhelming need and history of global interventionism, but I don’t think their preemptive strategy in Africa is opaque. European colonialism, with its complete negligence and indifference to the continent’s vast cultural and ethnic differences, has resulted in continued power vacuum struggles and genocides far surpassing the destabilization of the middle east. Somalia is known for its piracy. If it were able to hypothetically gain a strong hold over the Somalia gov. it could potentially have access to revenues in the way ISIS does with oil. That said, as weapons technologies advance, so too does the era of information accessibility and dissemination; powerful nation-states are no longer able to control the pre/post-war propaganda narratives of their actions as the once were able. As such, we’ve has seen powerful nations readjust their military strategies towards proxy wars, were the burden of reputation and accountability are far less demonizing and play more to their favor. This is the far more troubling aspect of drone technology and the inevitable increase in unmanned weapon automation. While the CIA has for decades covertly plotted, botched, and executed assassinations and coups around the world, it now seems as if they no longer care whether they have legal justification or not. I don’t believe governments are ever truly transparent about their military strategies, the efficacy of such strategies, or their mistakes; drones, however, seem to be pushing that veil of transparency into a darker technocratic corner. When metal is the only thing at stake in attack, as compared to civilian life, you don’t have to face the human anguish from your countries people, especially if deaths continue to amount in failed strategies; its far less emotionally resonant, and thus far less susceptible to public outcry and critique. The vitriol seen from the lies of the Iraq war are not as palpable in drone warfare; you don’t have to face a public conscience, you simply write a new check. Whatever your opinion on “global terrorism,” there needs to be a stricter, more transparent checks and balances infrastructure for drone warfare ,as well as a review of its legal validity by congress and the judicial branch in the near future. The debate whether drones or manned warfare are more pragmatic, or which leads to more radicalization will continue, but the legal precedent of oblique, unaccountable military assassination programs, be it the US or other countries, cannot be continued to be glossed over in such a dismissive attitude. Aggrieved The President has arrogantly substituted his executive assassination for the Constitutional demands with respect to aggression in the name of the citizens of this country. He has just killed 150 Somalians with the justification that he (!) believed they were terrorists in a country where we have not been invited and with which we are in no declared conflict. It is this colossal arrogance that makes such action so offensive (in all senses of the word). stalked562 dronesR4cowards. Deep State genocide. MUST-SEE. Everyone should watch the recent drone episode on the CBS series “The Good Wife”. Maybe it was really an American on U.S. soil that was assassinated? The show made the legal case that when they use a foreign name in a foreign nation – it could really be an American in Texas or another state – using pseudonyms. Even if hypothetical the show pointed out a major loophole in the letter and spirit of the law. The big question is: if a “suspect” (which means doubt) can be captured and brought to trial, could the U.S. government become a communist style secret police – turning in their own fellow citizens? altohone Hey GG It is a sad thing for me to even suggest this, but I would recommend including an estimated cost of the armaments and overhead in every article like this because the legal and moral arguments just aren’t compelling for the propagandized masses. $20,000,000 worth of missiles, etc. to take out presumed “bad guys” who can be replaced for $5,000 is something that may just sink in for even the most inured. “Obama is Wasting Your Money” shouldn’t have to be the title, but I’d bet a lot more people would read the article and maybe, perhaps, accidentally learn a thing or two about right and wrong along the way. Like I said. But even just as a journalism thing, including relevant information about the costs makes sense. Doug Salzmann altohone I remember, during our war on Vietnam, looking at “the numbers” and explaining to the audience at our anti-war coffee house that it would be much cheaper to hire the Mob to kill combatants for us, and that they wouldn’t take out nearly as many innocent civilians. My military superiors, as usual, were neither amused nor impressed. Mr. Greenwald This article amounts to more journalism where facts are selectively presented to the reader to tell a story which could be as far from reality as the government account of the use of drones which has stated that no civilians have died in drone attacks. “……Beyond that, the U.S. government’s own documents prove that in the vast majority of cases — 9 out of 10 in fact — it is killing people other than its intended targets. Last April, the New York Times published an articleunder the headline “Drone Strikes Reveal Uncomfortable Truth: U.S. Is Often Unsure About Who Will Die.” It quoted the scholar Micah Zenko saying, “Most individuals killed are not on a kill list, and the government does not know their names.”…..” This particular statistic is sited often by the Intercept and it is misleading journalism – at best. The perception from reading the account by the Intercept is that drones miss their intended targets nine out of ten times; thus, the ones who are killed could just be anyone who happened to be in that place at the wrong time – women, children and other innocent people. The fact that drones miss the intended target 90% of the time does not mean that a high percentage of the ones killed are innocent civilians. The “scholar”, Mr Zenko (in the same New York Times article) points out: “…….Mr. Zenko said that an average of separate counts of American drone strikes by three organizations, the New America Foundation, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism and The Long War Journal, finds that 522 strikes have killed 3,852 people, 476 of them civilians. But those counts, based on news accounts and some on-the-ground interviews, are considered very rough estimates…….” That is a very high percentage of “militant” to civilian death ratio albeit just a rough estimate. That would suggest that drone operators are correctly targeting terrorists even if the intended target was not with the militants. Furthermore, according to the (same) New York Times article, eight Americans have been killed in drone strikes: “……Mr. Zenko noted that with the new disclosures, a total of eight Americans have been killed in drone strikes. Of those, only one, the American cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who joined Al Qaeda in Yemen and was killed in 2011, was identified and deliberately targeted…Though by most accounts six of the eight Americans were allied with Al Qaeda…….” So roughly three quarters of the Americans killed in drone strikes were aligned with al-Qaeda even if they were not the target of the drone strike. Joining al-Qaeda could lead to your death – American, or not. Additionally, drones offer the best chance of limiting civilian casualties according to the same New York Times article: “…….Most security experts still believe that drones, which allow a scene to be watched for hours or days through video feeds, still offer at least the chance of greater accuracy than other means of killing terrorists. By most accounts, conventional airstrikes and ground invasions kill a higher proportion of noncombatants……” None of these statistics are pointed out in the article which indicates the failings of advocacy journalism. Finally, the US rightly targeted the Kenyan terrorist organization responsible for brutal attacks on civilian targets: “……Masked al-Shabab militants stormed dormitories at a university in eastern Kenya early Thursday, killing at least 147 people in the worst terror attack on Kenyan soil in nearly two decades, officials said…..” It has already been established that the pro-torture, deeply authoritarian Craig Summers rejects the 4th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. Now he also rants in total disregard for Article I, Section 8, Clause 11: In this article Greenwald shows himself once again to be more lawyer than journalist using selective quotes to advance his argument while ignoring quotes that undermine his argument. Once again, I just have provided the other side of the story. Sufi Muslim craigsummers The http://www.the-un-intercept.com domain name is available, Craig. It has already been established that Mona is an irrational idiot who does not understand statistics and an ignorant lawyer who has no idea that the US Congress authorized military operations in Somalia. Ronny craigsummers “The perception from reading the account by the Intercept” You mean your deliberately distorted interpretation, not what the journalists actually wrote. Tom Human craigsummers Let me get this straight – you agree that the United States kills an awful lot of people in countries that it isn’t in fact at war with, and that many of them are in fact completely innocent – your only quibble is with the percentage of the people killed who aren’t? This is morally empty reasoning. The United States has no right whatsoever to kill people in foreign countries simply because they are suspected* of terrorism, particularly when a lot of other randoms are usually killed at the same time. And worse – the threat to an American from terrorism is minuscule. It’s not like you’re throwing away any possible status as “the good guys” for any logical reason – you’d doing it out of sheer cowardice. craigsummers Tom Human “……..Let me get this straight – you agree that the United States kills an awful lot of people in countries that it isn’t in fact at war with, and that many of them are in fact completely innocent – your only quibble is with the percentage of the people killed who aren’t?…..” Are you suggesting that no innocent civilians should ever be killed in a war zone? That’s absurd. Minimizing the civilian deaths should always be the goal and the use of drones minimizes civilian deaths – as the article in the New York Times cited by Greenwald says. “…..The United States has no right whatsoever to kill people in foreign countries simply because they are suspected of terrorism…..” Can you just quit pretending that al-Shabaab is a terror cell in Somalia? They have an estimated 7000-9000 fighters. They pledged allegiance to al-Qaeda and they conducted terrorists attacks outside of Somalia – one of which I pointed out in my first post. They have primarily targeted non Muslims for murder. Whether Obama cites the AUMF, Shabaab’s link to al-Qaeda (who we are at war with) or their brutal murder of civilians (humanitarian reasons), the US is right to provide support to the Somali government. Oh, and they are not suspected of being terrorists; they are terrorists. Mike Sulzer craigsummers …War Journal, finds that 522 strikes have killed 3,852 people, 476 of them civilians. But those counts, based on news accounts and some on-the-ground interviews, are considered very rough estimates…….” That is a very high percentage of “militant” to civilian death ratio albeit just a rough estimate. That would suggest that drone operators are correctly targeting terrorists even if the intended target was not with the militants. Well that depends on the conditions required to be declared a civilian. Why make it easy? “The fact that drones miss their intended target 90% of the time”, if true, destroys the entire rationale for carrying out drone attacks: that precision targeting takes out intended militants. If you believe that drones only kill the intended target 1 in 10 times, but about 7 people are killed per drone strike, then 70 people are killed in order to hit one intended target. It is not possible to believe that most of those seventy just happen to be other valid targets. That is, it is absurd to believe that on average less than one “civilian” per drone strike is killed. craigsummers Mike Sulzer “……That is, it is absurd to believe that on average less than one “civilian” per drone strike is killed……” Why? If there is any truth to the US claim that 150 fighters were killed in a terrorist training facility, why would you expect ANY civilian casualties? That statement has nothing to do with my response to the numbers you quoted. Fair enough Mike. Lets try this again. “…….Well that depends on the conditions required to be declared a civilian. Why make it easy? “The fact that drones miss their intended target 90% of the time”, if true, destroys the entire rationale for carrying out drone attacks: that precision targeting takes out intended militants……” No it does not. You need to read my first post again and note the high amount of estimated terrorists that are killed even if the intended target is not with the other terrorists at that time, or survives the bombing. The bombings are not random which is what is implied by Greenwald’s statement – and your response. The drone operators are not targeting families strolling to the local mosque. I think you are wrong when you suggest disbelief that most of the other people killed who were not the intended target are valid targets. Statistically (and I admit these are rough estimates), you are wrong based on the New York Times article which estimates about 12% of the deaths are civilians. camilo francisco craigsummers would you like to be the good guy that gets drone killed because you happen to be where bad guys are? I don’t think you would. furthermore, what will limit the power of the American Government if it is not the laws. my perception is not that the drones miss their intended target and kill who ever is there, they target who ever is there not knowing who they are. craigsummers camilo francisco “…….my perception is not that the drones miss their intended target and kill who ever is there, they target who ever is there not knowing who they are……” Again, drone operators do not bomb at random. Have they made mistakes? Absolutely, however, so have fighter jets, tanks, artillery, machine guns and M16 rifles. JoePesci craigsummers @craig – I do not get the point you are trying to get across. Are you pro-bombing whoever happens to be “bad” on that day or you actually believe those atrocities were justified? “Are you suggesting that no innocent civilians should ever be killed in a war zone? ” – this is the predicament, the “war zone”. For a war zone to exist there must be a declared war. Last time that was checked the US of A is not a war with Somalia, Senegal, Zimbabwe, Pakistan, Iran, Kuwait, UAE, or the rest of the countries they have carried drone attacks and have special forces actively deployed. Hence, there is no justified civilian casualties whatsoever simply based on the wording POTUS and the Pentagon have been employing. Based on the same rationale, should there be a “suspected al Qaeda cell” in, say Texas, they should be bombed into oblivion, even without any proof justifying it. Do you see how flawed your logic is? craigsummers JoePesci “……I do not get the point you are trying to get across. Are you pro-bombing whoever happens to be “bad” on that day or you actually believe those atrocities were justified?…. In my opinion, they are justified. Even the Geneva Conventions recognizes that civilians will be killed in a “war zone”. That is unfortunate, but it’s also reality. “……For a war zone to exist there must be a declared war…..” The US is not at war with Somalia. The US is at war with non state actors like ISIS, Boko Haram, al-Shabaab and al-Qaeda (remember 911?). Al-Shabaab is affiliated with al-Qaeda so can be targeted under legislation passed by Congress in 2001 (AUMF). Al-Shabaab is an international terrorist organization – and it makes not one fucking bit of difference if al-Shabaab (or ISIS) existed in 2001 or not. Even if Congress declared war on Somalia, would you support the war effort then? Very unlikely in my opinion. Thus, you just are attempting to use a legal means to stop from targeting an internationally recognized terrorist organization who targets civilians for murder. “……. Based on the same rationale, should there be a “suspected al Qaeda cell” in, say Texas, they should be bombed into oblivion, even without any proof justifying it. Do you see how flawed your logic is?…..” Can you just drop this idea that al-Shabaab is just a terror cell. They have employed between 7000 and 9000 fighters. And they are not suspected of being terrorists. They are terrorists. @craig even by the US AUMF this is illegal given that Section 2 Part a states: IN GENERAL- That the President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons. Boko Haram and al Shabab did not exist and are not related to 9/11 hence, following the text of AUMF said military action in Somalia is both illegal and unconstitutional. Should there be evidence, justification, reasoning behind it such as “actionable intelligence was acquired and proves that X and Y were leaders of a training camp, recruiting fighter, etc.”, that would be somewhat reasonable. Given the track record the White House and the Pentagon have about sharing such details we might as well assume those people were divine angels purifying water for the people of the world singing Kumbaya as there is the same amount of evidence for that as much as that they were “terrorists”. GKJames It may be useful to note the US Government’s position: “‘[I]imminent'” threat of violent attack against the United States does not require the United States to have clear evidence that a specific attack on U.S. persons and interests will take place in the immediate future.” (2011 DOJ White Paper, “Lawfulness of a Lethal Operation Directed Against a U.S. Citizen Who Is a Senior Operational Leader of Al-Qa’ida or An Associated Force”) Needless to say, the USG strives mightily to ensure that this notion never makes it into a legitimate Art. III proceeding for adjudication. Dumbhe I know! Let’s try uniting all nations and adhering to to the international laws that we all agree to! Ya! That’s the ticket! Cheney, Bush, and I guess now Obama, to the Hague. The problem is, the shyte stained sociopaths will skate, unless we either chase them on the ground or drone them. How do we stop this snow ball to hell? We are all a part of a rather dynamic and energetic phenomena, who’s origins are of constant debate. Can solutions be less complicated? Baldie McEagle Wish I had a degree in terrorism. It would come in very handy in the corporate world. I would be surprised if you had any degree at all. Classic Craig—pontificating on matters utterly unknown to him to try to score a schoolboy’s point. But then his degree is in alternate history. Decatur204 Al-Shabaab confirmed the U.S. hit one of their training camps, just that the death toll was exaggerated. Any resulting civilian deaths are the responsibility of the terrorists who put them in a combat environment, regardless of who actually dropped the bomb. -Mona- Decatur204 I see. Spoken like the depraved Zionist you are. Decatur204 -Mona- Because shilling for Islamism like you and the Greenwalds of the world is better? We are not depraved. We care deeply about whether our Executive adheres to our Constitution. Come on Mona. You can do much better than that Fabrizio Decatur204 did you deliberately miss this part or are you just a very little attentive reader? “But why does it have troops there at all in need of protection? The answer: The troops are there to operate drone bases and attack people they regard as a threat to them. But if they weren’t there in the first place, these groups could not pose a threat to them. They may put them in a combat environment and may be killed by other fellow Somalis. It’s their war. Like it or not. But as clearly specified above, and (unlike your point) supported by facts and research, the US ha NO RIGHT WHATSOEVER to bomb them in their country. So your point is not just baseless… Decatur204 Fabrizio The U.S. isn’t bombing “their country”, they’re specifically bombing violent jihadists who are destroying that country. Al-Shabab is not representative of Somalia and most Somalians are not losing any sleep over these jihadists being killed. The U.S. has troops in Africa to support and train other (internationally sanctioned) Africans to fight these Islamist groups which are a growing plague all over the world. It’s not just an internal Somalian issue when these groups start targeting foreign civilians in other countries (like Westgate mall in Kenya). By what legal authority do we engage in war in Somalia? Well the U.N. security council voted on the African Union mission in Somalia. Greenwald has already cited the AUMF that allows the U.S. to target Al-Qaeda’s allies or associates, which Shabab surely is. Greenwald wrote this, my emphasis: The government is not claiming the AUMF authorizes this. So, what does? Also from the original post: Just like there wasn’t evidence they hit a terrorist training camp… until the terrorists admitted it. You’re evading the question: The government is not claiming the AUMF authorizes this. So, what does? I already answered it, again citing from Greenwald’s article: under the “self-defense” theory that the U.S. government invoked, it is allowed — under its own policies promulgated in 2013 — to use lethal force away from an active war zone (e.g., Afghanistan) “only against a target that poses a continuing, imminent threat to U.S. persons.” The AUMF and this “self-defense” theory are two different things. It comes down to whether or not the Shabab jihadists were about to launch an attack on U.S. forces and their allies. If so, then the strike against them was legitimate. (I have to leave now, be back tomorrow) Idiot, indeed. United States Congress text S.1745, November 2013. the point was exactly: do you have proof that those 150 were all terrorists? The article, among other things, focuses on this issue. We don’t. Leroy Frazier Decatur204 ” Al-Shabab is not representative of Somalia and most Somalians are not losing any sleep over these jihadists being killed.” And you obviously speak for all Somalis. Luther Brixton Decatur204 Exactly! Why are civilians living in the areas the US is bombing??? That’s what I want to know! Clearly, it’s either the fault of the children, infants, and innocent men and women that are obliterated…. or it’s the “terrorists” fault… even though there is nothing to confirm they are terrorists beyond the Official Word. PS. They hate us for our freedom and any blow-back from our drone strikes is outrageous, unconscionable, and clearly “terrorism”! Decatur204 Luther Brixton I guess you missed the part where Al-Shabab themselves have admitted the strike hit their training camp (just with a lower death toll): http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/03/somalia-al-shabab-toll-air-strikes-exaggerated-160308072906528.html Clearly it is the fault of terrorists if any women and children were used as human shields in what was literally a terrorist training camp. Nete Peedham Decatur204 Why, then, do extreme right wingnuts whine about Ruby Ridge and Waco? Are they different because they wore ball caps and flannel shirts? Ronny Decatur204 The same applies to those people who died on 9/11, then? I mean, in neither case was it a “combat environment” until it was attacked. All those innocent shabobs. US Cole and more so all is fair in love and war…this is the new face of war glenn don’t mistake it. Jesse Knight The drone war is the zombic progeny of humanity’s class war. Here we have a man who has eight + figures in the bank, who sends his own children to an exclusive private school, while in the same day, he uses the levers of power to murder some of the poorest children on the planet. No wonder the media spends all their time telling us what a great father he is. And if we think for a minute on why this rich (brown skinned) man is murdering poor innocent (often brown skinned) children, there can be only one real answer: class. -Mona- Let’s put this front and center. Constitution of the United States, Article I, Section 8, Clause 11: What congressional declaration or authorization permits the president to bomb fighters in Somalia? Baldie McEagle -Mona- Congress ain’t runnin’ for Preznit, baby! Seriously, you have to wonder if they ever get jealous of the insubordinate branch. Or do they just sigh with relief that all they really need to do is collect money and occasionally step in front of a camera? bahhummingbug -Mona- AUMF … i think it’s ‘grandfathered-in’ now, Mona. I would put our International Humanitarian Law/Law of Armed Conflict obligations, which the Pentagon assures the world are met in all Drone operations, (!), front and center … but that would require some old-fashioned subordination of national sovereignty and interests to the broader claims of global unity and security. International humanitarian law (IHL) is the law that regulates the conduct of war (jus in bello). It is that branch of international law which seeks to limit the effects of armed conflict by protecting persons who are not participating in hostilities, and by restricting and regulating the means and methods of warfare available to combatants. IHL is inspired by considerations of humanity and the mitigation of human suffering. “It comprises a set of rules, established by treaty or custom, that seeks to protect persons and property/objects that are (or may be) affected by armed conflict and limits the rights of parties to a conflict to use methods and means of warfare of their choice”.[1] It includes “the Geneva Conventions and the Hague Conventions, as well as subsequent treaties, case law, and customary international law.”[2] It defines the conduct and responsibilities of belligerent nations, neutral nations, and individuals engaged in warfare, in relation to each other and to protected persons, usually meaning non-combatants. It is designed to balance humanitarian concerns and military necessity, and subjects warfare to the rule of law by limiting its destructive effect and mitigating human suffering.[3] wikipedia You would think a “lawyer” would do her research before she makes a fool of herself: Somalia Stabilization Act of 2013: “Expresses the sense of Congress that the United States should… (5) carry out all diplomatic, economic, intelligence, MILITARY, and development activities in Somalia within the context of a comprehensive strategy coordinated through an interagency process.” https://www.congress.gov/bill/113th-congress/senate-bill/1745 If you were not a lawyer, then I would say you are just ignorant. But since you are a lawyer who should know better, then I call you an idiot. Just because Greenwald does not mention that congressional bill that specifically authorizes the executive to use the military in Somalia does not meant it does not exist. Greenwald relies on idiots like you to trust him to the point of not even performing a basic legal research. Presumptuous Insect As GG notes, ” the complete normalization of the model whereby the U.S. president kills whomever he wants, wherever he wants, without regard for any semblance of law, process, accountability, or evidence” stands in the way of citizen outrage at our wholly lawless behavior in the world. When I talk to seemingly educated people about politics, this enormous issue is indeed outside of the realm of consideration, and when I inject it into any conversation, people make faces, change the topic, joke about my “radicalism,” in short, do anything but address the charges. As this is the very thing that makes our lives dangerous and our future uncertain, I am always stunned how little concern people have about it. It is frightening. Aggrieved Presumptuous Insect -Mona- Presumptuous Insect Yes PI, I’ve had that same experience many times. Many of these folks think they are real patriots who love the Constitution. I tell them that very document — the supreme law of the land — reserves to Congress the power to declare war. I further explain why the drafters and ratifiers of the Constitution included that — the long history of kings making war for political gain and profit. Without a democratic check on the Executive, the Executive is a king. These are not remotely”radical” arguments. They are fundamentally American. Presumptuous Insect -Mona- Right on, Mona. Jeff -Mona- You two are hanging out with the wrong people. None of the people I discuss things like this with think it’s OK for Obama or any other president to go around the world killing people for any reason, let alone for resources like oil. NBA Hall of Famer Charles Barkley gave his two cents on the presidential race on Tuesday by saying “all politics is rich people screwing poor people” and that “poor people are too stupid to know they’re just chess pieces in a game”. Barkley said he wasn’t exactly thrilled by the Democratic party – “I’ve always voted Democratic. Always. I don’t know why. I’m trying to figure out exactly what they’ve done for us” – Who knew the Round Mound of Rebound was a political economy savant? Guess I’ll have to give him credit where credit is due. http://www.theguardian.com/sport/2016/mar/08/charles-barkley-politics-republicans-democrats Jeff rrheard I seem to remember Barkley being a Republican. He switched when the Tea Baggers started to take over the party. His comment was, I was a Republican until the Republicans lost their minds. This guy’s a loudmouth blowhard, I wouldn’t put any stock in anything he says. I agree with the comment you quoted, but it would take a lot more than that for me to view Barkley as anything more than an entertaining sports figure. rrheard Jeff @ Jeff It was just a link for fun. That’s why the “who knew” and “give credit where due” for the particular statement. I too remember when he said he was a “Republican until they lost their minds.” I was, maybe inappropriately, just trying to bring a little levity to a serious thread. Trust me, nothing Charles Barkley has to say on any topic, including basketball, do I attach any importance or value you to. And his golf swing is horrible, which as a fairly serious recreational golfer makes me cringe every time I see it. Robert Besseling, an analyst with EXX Africa, added: “While the killing of some 150 al-Shabaab fighters, if confirmed, will be a blow to the group, it is unlikely to have fatally struck its fighting capability within Somalia. “Further US airstrikes alone are also unlikely to thwart al-Shabaab’s offensive around Mogadishu and other areas where the group has expanded its operations such as northwards into Galmudug and Puntland.” Is it a feature or a bug of the West’s foreign policy? Or is it the definition of self-perpetuating insanity? Not sure how you kill an idea except to discredit it, but America and its allies are hell-bent on trying to do it via force of arms. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/mar/08/al-shabaab-us-airstrike-training-camp-somalia-eyewitness Please peeps, ignore the troll truth&Freedom It takes over the threads, posting voluminous insults, name-calling and inanity. It’s been kicked out of here before under different monikers. To engage is to help it do it’s disruptive thing. rrheard -Mona- Good advice. Sometimes it is hard to resist mocking and/or taunting it. Ted -Mona- Just a stab, but could truth&freedom and craigsummers be one and the same? -Mona- Ted Nah. Craig’s a known entity who’s been spewing the same crap, in the same phrases and pitch, since Glenn’s days at the Guardian. He’s sui generis. The latest attacks come after months of violence in Israel and the Palestinian territories in which 183 Palestinians and 28 Israelis have been killed since October. That’s about a 6-7 to 1 ratio which is lower than the historical average. Maybe that’s a silver lining or reason to hope. The alternative being the Palestinians just lay down and die, I guess. Not sure what other opportunities for self-determination or an independent state has been left to them. Tragic for all involved. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/mar/08/at-least-10-israelis-stabbed-tel-aviv-Israel God we suck. We just plain ass fucking suck. Someone should nuke us. Presumptuous Insect rick I have said for years that I will welcome with flowers and open arms any relatively civilized nation who comes to oversee our governance and behavior in the world until we learn to follow (just) laws. charliethreeee rick This is the definition of white guilt. If you are a liberal with self esteem issues because you find society depressing, just take drugs or find some other way to release that pent up energy. Releasing that energy on an internet forum will only make you appear weak and nobody will pay attention to what you are saying. Presumptuous Insect charliethreeee zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz WSpackman Thanks once again for slapping me out that gullible stupor on which propaganda thrives. Thanks once again for a slapping me out of that gullible stupor on which propaganda thrives. http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/mar/08/fbi-changes-privacy-rules-accessing-nsa-prism-data All surveillance all the time. Full spectrum dominance. STASI would be jealous. “It” is classified. “We” make changes, but you can’t see what they are–just trust us, maybe we’ll show you in the future–because your safety is our top priority. Somebody knows everything, Glenn. White House to reveal death toll of US drone strikes for first time http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/mar/07/us-drone-strikes-death-toll Senior aide says US will disclose the number of terrorism suspects and civilians killed since 2009 in bid to bolster public support for controversial operations As Monaco spoke, the Pentagon confirmed it had conducted a massive airstrike in Somalia that left 150 people dead, one the largest casualty totals in a US military attack of the post-9/11 era. Fabrizio bahhummingbug We already know the numbers, the point is not the numbers, it’s: “how do they know these 150 people were all terrorists?” the self apologetic theory that: “they must have all been terrorists preparing attacks against US interests, therefore, we had the right to kill them” which is groundless. “There was no independent way to verify the claim” Not one mention of the African Union? Or NATO’s alliance with the AU? Sourcing Salon articles. It must be easy to make your point when you only look at half of the facts… Excellent essay and disclosure of another blunder by the USA. We will muse down the road “why they hate us” when the associates of the Somalian dead may inflict their response in kind in reaction to their “day of infamy”. Tony Backhouse Everyone under 30 years of age is considered a legitimate target by Obama as Al Shabab is Arabic for “The Youth” News consumer The Newyork Times is a very patriotic paper. It loves its country and its leaders. And works very hard to keep up the image of the U.S. even when it may not be deserved. I really appreciate the nationalistic role this paper fulfills. It is a national treasure. Karl Heinrich Marx Wow, I am completely gobsmacked to read all of this…. After all, wasn’t it just last week that former CIA Director assured all of us that the military would not carry out a President Trump’s orders to target the families of potential terrorism suspects because, and I quote, “they would not carry out an illegal order, even from the President?” [clutching my pearls] I simply won’t believe it! sarcasm (You are awesome and are a journalistic hero of mine, Mr. Greenwald. Please keep up the terrific and vital work.) 1. U.S. acting with consent of Somalia government, as other international/ actors including AMISOM forces.Therefore no violation of international law in this respect. 2. Al-Shabaab admitted being attacked but denied number of casuality as exaggerated. 3. How number of killed ascertained not clear yet, civilian casuality possible. 4. Somalia’s unique geopolitics, prolonged conflict, presence of ethnic groups in at least The official line hasn’t changed in this regard, dead = enemy, a court case or two might have made a very small dent in that assumption but other than that it stands strong for most. Everyone killed should be named with age and picture of them when alive and historical information. Without that nothing can be verified. Plus personal information might make people think twice about lives they so cruelly & carelessly dismiss with disdain. Lee Mulcahy I substitute teach at Aspen High School in Colorado. The other day I taught social studies. This article should be required reading for every high school student in America. Is there any website with a list of US attacks on foreign soil and (estimated) number of victims? (Something akin to the GunViolenceArchive site.) Cs Sheep Check out thebureauinvestigates.com a1a Sheep http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2014/nov/24/-sp-us-drone-strikes-kill-1147 data from http://www.reprieve.org.uk not comprehensive but a start. x Sheep This is the closest I know of to that https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/category/projects/drones/drones-graphs/ Mary Ellen O'Connell Reading this powerful article reminds me again of Vietnam and the substitution of enemy death statistics for success. Extraordinary that so many are willing to support drone killing despite the evidence of failure, illegality and immorality. (Recall Gen. Mike Flynn’s Al Jazeera interview in July 2015 on the counter-productive results of drone killing and, yet, it goes on.) One great difference: U.S. killing in Vietnam finally ended when the draft reached American college students. No help there with drones. What might persuade? The turn to beauty? To Greenwald: You need to improve your arguments. It seems you love being applauded by idiots. 1) “The U.S. is not at war in Somalia. Congress has never declared war on Somalia, nor has it authorized the use of military force there. Morality and ethics to the side for the moment: what legal authority does Obama even possess to bomb this country?….But al-Shabab did not exist in 2001 and had nothing to do with 9/11.” The judge would kick you out of the room for being stupid. a) The US is not at war with Somalia. US military as well as many African military operations in Somalia against Al Shabab are done at the request of the Federal Government of Somalia, which is fully recognized internationally with a seat at the United Nations. A situation similar to Iraq and Afghanistan where elected, and recognized governments have publicly and officially requested military support against terrorism. b) It is completely irrelevant that Al Shabab has nothing to do with 9/11. It is possible that even the Taliban leadership did not know about Al Qaeda 9/11 plans. However, providing assistance to a global terrorist organization is a crime. In this case, it is military assistance by specially designated terrorists. That is an imbecilic argument. Should the US attack Al Qaeda and ignore those who are hiding, training and protecting Al Qaeda fighters? “But if they weren’t there in the first place, these groups could not pose a threat to them.” “It’s the ultimate self-perpetuating circle of imperialism: we need to deploy troops to other countries in order to attack those who are trying to kill U.S. troops who are deployed there.” This is not only an idiotic argument. It is actually very pathetic. How many Indonesian troops are fighting against ISIS, or Al Qaeda in Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq or Africa? How many Argentinian troops fought against Hezbollah? How many Swiss troops have fought against anybody in the Middle East? Those countries did exactly what terrorist sympathizers like you have been advocated but their citizens got targeted and massacred. Some on their own soil! You made your ignorant followers very happy with that article! Jose truth&Freedom If a government can request military help from the US to fight rebels and get it, I can guarantee you that government is illegitimate. If a regime is helped by an empire, it means it’s either controlled or part of that empire. That much is obvious. Lots of regimes widely considered illegitimate have a seat at the UN, so that doesn’t tell us much. The reality is that the TFG was imposed externally, and there’s no evidence it enjoys any type of popular support. Further, it’s clear Al-Shabaab only exists due to political destabilization brought about by foreign intervention. Truth&Freedom Jose “If a government can request military help from the US to fight rebels and get it, I can guarantee you that government is illegitimate” The people decide whether their government is legitimate or not. I understand you have to distort logic, create your own laws in order to support your weird arguments. So, it does not matter how many people voted for the current government of Nigeria. It is completely irrelevant that the top candidates in the Afghan election and the Jirga requested military help even before the election. And it does not matter that those elections results were deemed acceptable by many observers who acknowledged serious irregularities in those countries with poor democratic institutions. What matters for you is the feeling that you must have that the US is wrong. So, you must reject those governments in order to support your argument. That is the difference between the anti American and the Patriot. The patriot will demand an investigation to know whether civilians died as result of negligeance from US forces. The anti American will redefine terrorism, reject local authorities to prove himself that the US is the terrorist not those massacred those civilians at the Kenyan mall. The patriot will demand an investigation to know whether civilians died I find myself wondering if there’s a prize for trolling. Thanks for proving my point: you are a typical idiot like most of Greenwald’s supporters. Steve Truth&Freedom Patriotism is a pernicious form of idiocy , I think we can all tell by your comments that you are obviously a very good patriot . Good boy. -Mona- Jose None of that matters, Jose. The Constitution of the United States requires Congress to declare war before the Executive may make war. Article I, Section 8, Clause 11: The PM of Somalia — or Canada or Luxembourg — can make all the requests they like. Our Executive has no power to make war at their request without congressional authorization. Congress gave the United States President the authority to provide military assistance to Somalia against Al Shabab. Congress gave the United States president authority to provide military assistance to Canada (through NATO) in case that country gets attacked. Idiot, indeed. Jeff Jose You’re arguing with a fascist imperialist troll. Best thing to do is ignore him. Wnt truth&Freedom I was going to make many of the same arguments, but now that you’ve done that I’ll quibble with you instead. It’s true that the U.S. was “just helping Somalia”. The catch is that the government of Somalia is disputed. What we’re doing is nobler, but still somewhat comparable to Russia “helping” out the Donetsk and Kharkiv separatists. Or more to the point, it’s a ‘police action’ comparable to our help for the government of South Vietnam. One distinction comes down to whether the government is worth fighting for. If Somalia’s federal leadership turns out to be another Diem, we’re wasting our time. To repeat something I said recently, the U.S. has a way of finding a turd castle in the jungle and sitting good soldiers on top of it to defend it with their lives until it smooshes out from under their asses. However— if the Somalia government turns out to be honest and just, or at least relatively so, and offers new hope and peace for its citizens in quiet contemplation of their human liberties, well, then it is a noble cause. The other distinction comes down to who gets to pick the good cause. As in Vietnam, the president has and abuses too much leeway to get into another country’s conflict. The U.S. Army might not quite be the French Foreign Legion, but sometimes you wonder who’s getting paid to bring them into battle anyway. Oh, I understand why – our system before the abuses started was quite reasonable, and we quite reasonably sat out of the Second World War until it was almost too late. I can kind of picture “Lend Lease” getting thrown out by the courts and Britain falling, or the Army hamstrung in the battle against Rommel by the need to get a fresh declaration of war for each country in Africa the Germans turned up in. Still, the system we have now is prone to its own sort of risks, risks that have cost real lives for half a century. truth&Freedom Wnt I understand your point, but I disagree. After the Cold War the US has tried not to get deeply involved in African conflicts. Even genocides did not really attract the US attention. If Al Shabab was only dedicated at massacring other African tribes the US involvement would certainly be very limited. In this particular situation you have a terrorist organization dedicated not only at massacring Somalis, but also at massacring other Africans in neighboring states and at helping Al Qaeda whose past time is to kill whomever disagrees with them around the world. So, it is not like Vietnam when you had the Chinese, the Russians against the French or the US. In this case you have the African Union, the Russians, the Chinese, the whole United Nations against Al Shabab. Baldie McEagle truth&Freedom “After the Cold War the US has tried not to get deeply involved in African conflicts. ” You need to update your programming. The US is angling for bases all over Africa. Also, you gave me a real laugh with this: “…the Army hamstrung in the battle against Rommel by the need to get a fresh declaration of war for each country in Africa the Germans turned up in. ” Finally, remember what happened to the guy (let’s call him the Somalian “government”) who hired another guy (let’s call him the US) to rape his wife (let’s call her the Somalian opposition). It was supposed to be “fun.” It didn’t turn out that way for any of the participants. http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=7756586 Eternal Blue Sky truth&Freedom Indonesian Islamic terrorism has been back-and-forth since it got Independence. The original terrorist group arose because it disagreed with the government ceding land to the Dutch. The terrorists there have been trying to secede ever since. You’re argument is nonsense because Indonesian troops fight DARUL ISLAM, not any of the groups you happen to name. Argentinians were collateral damage. Terrorists were aiming at Israelis and just didn’t care who got in the way. Again, targets were Israelis. Oh look, in every instance the terrorists were going after nationals of nations that DID war against them. Sure, it’s not Argentina’s fault they got hit, but the root cause of the attack was still a country warring in the Middle East. It’s almost like foreign interventionism endangers everyone and should be despised because of that fact. D truth&Freedom You just conveniently forgot that the CIA trained Al Qaeda? Which the US itself has starkly ignored by the way. Seems to put a dent in your argument. Nonya truth&Freedom 100 % nail on the head Fabrizio truth&Freedom At some point, reading your comment, I was thinking, ok, now that he’s quoted half of the article, the genius is going to hit back with some solid argument. Only to be hugely disappointed: Can you possibly debate above article with some RELEVANT points? Are you sure this is the article you wanted to comment on? maybe you swapped tabs in your browser? Glad to be one of the readers you call idiotic. Coming from you, such insult is a medal on my chest. truth&Freedom Fabrizio In that case I gave you a silver medal for stupidity. The point is very relevant. Greenwald argues in that article that if US troops were not in Somalia then, they could not be threatened by terrorist groups. That sounds logical. The problem is that terrorist groups have proved they do no care whether a country sends troops the territory they operate. They do not even care whether a country is part of their conflicts. I gave example to back this point: Argentina, Indonesia, Switzerland. Those countries did not deploy troops anywhere to fight against Al Qaeda, ISIS…but their citizens got targeted, and killed. So, the idea constantly promoted by terrorist sympathizers that if a country stays away from the conflicts involved with terrorists its citizens will be safe is just ridiculous. You cannot see it because you are an idiot. The US has a very good reason for being in Somalia; it ‘s the next Saudi Arabia. From an article last year: With excellent access to shipping lanes and supposedly massive untapped wealth (perhaps as much as 110 billion barrels) it is no surprise that multinational oil companies are intrigued. The US may not articulate its foreign policy goals very well, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t any underlying strategy. There is a good argument for supporting the puppet regime in Mogadishu. However, it doesn’t fall easily into the good vs bad narrative and therefore is not suitable for public discussion. nfjtakfa Benito Mussolini Have you heard of a decent candidate for Somalia’s new royalty? Or do you suppose they’ll just colonize and install a viceroy as is no doubt planned for Libya, you know, to protect the new puppet government in Tunisia? truth&Freedom Benito Mussolini “There is a good argument for supporting the puppet regime in Mogadishu.” What makes that government a “puppet” regime? I am asking because very popular governments around the world do request and obtain military support from the US ( South Korea, Germany, Japan..). I am curious to know whether you classify a government “puppet” simply because it requests military assistance. Northwestwoods truth&Freedom What’s an empire without apologists? Truth&Freedom Northwestwoods What’s The Intercept without the idiots? rrheard Truth&Freedom You with your bad grammar and inability to blockquote. truth&Freedom rrheard You with your empty wallet and your 1/4 brain. We would do just fine without you. truth&Freedom Baldie McEagle Then convince TI to make its comments section fully private: “Idiots Only”. Until then I will come back here from time to time to demonstrate how stupid most of you are. Daniel truth&Freedom Really a better term is client state. The U.S. has had them since the 1800’s. Some countries graduate out of that status, but it’s a rare event. Go read anything written by Kissinger if you don’t believe it. Benito Mussolini truth&Freedom What makes that government a “puppet” regime? If a foreign government starts building a military base without even seeking the permission of the local government, then there’s a good chance it’s a puppet government. From a good summary of recent Somali history: Aside from training and building Somalia’s intelligence infrastructure, the Americans are building a new, secretive military base 70 kilometers southwest of Mogadishu, without any official arrangement with the Somali government. The base has a capacity to house up to 100,000 troops, according to one source, who wished not to be named. As a result, the locals are seeing an influx of not only American troops, but private contractors, mercenaries and Big Oil “security.” “If a foreign government starts building a military base without even seeking the permission of the local government, then there’s a good chance it’s a puppet government.” This is a flawed argument. Many countries has laws and constitutions that allow central governments to sign treaties with foreign governments regardless of what local governments think. According to your argument Japan has a puppet government even thought most of the highly educated Japanese who have strong democratic institutions available to them do not believe so and the government follows the laws as it supposed to. It seems, like Greenwald, you are just redefining reality to support your point. Your link does not work with my computer, but this is another link regarding building military sites in Somalia http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/07/02/exclusive-u-s-operates-drones-from-secret-bases-in-somalia-special-operations-jsoc-black-hawk-down/ This is what Abdighani Abdi Jama, a minister in the LOCAL government of Kismayo stated about the building of US bases: ” They have a base over there….they have high tech; they have drones…we are really benefiting” It does not appear that local authorities are against those bases. Specially in a fragmented country like Somalia where warlords’ approval is necessary for almost every project. So even if one follows your flawed argument, you cannot demonstrate that the Somali government is a puppet based on that criteria. justsomeguy Truth&Freedom “Your link does not work with my computer,…” http://www.janwellmann.com/tag/mogadishu/ Here is another link to the same story. Japan has signed a Status Of Forces Agreement; it’s a client state, not a puppet regime. The government would survive without the US military presence. In Somalia, the local regime would not survive without US military backing. So of course it is in favor of the US presence. That’s not an argument against it being a puppet regime, but rather for it. This doesn’t mean it will always be a puppet regime. Once the oil revenues start flowing , it will have sufficient resources to assure its own security and can graduate to become a client state. You get back to the original point. The question is not whether we are for or against a puppet regime. The question is: what is a puppet regime? You stated 1) That criteria is not clear with the words “good chance”. 2) In Somalia, Afghanistan and Iraq there are local governments that welcome US bases, so even using that criteria you cannot state that the Somali government is a puppet regime. 3) There are democratic countries where the laws make it clear that the central government does not need the permission of local governments to sign treaties with foreign governments. That is really a very weak argument to classify democratic governments as puppets or as clients when candidates clearly stated before being elected that they will use the law of the land to enter into treaties with foreign governments. So again, what criteria do you use in order to describe a particular government “puppet”? Jeff Benito Mussolini Or as Dr. Michael Parenti once put it, just because YOU don’t know what they’re doing doesn’t mean that THEY don’t know what they’re doing. Virtually all wars are resource wars first and foremost. The people who benefit and their lackeys in government always propagandize to the contrary, but that propaganda should be ignored. ContinuousDeception Jeff The modern template for this, I think, started with Panama under OOTW and was called “Just Cause” – since then every engagement is justified with Thomas Paine like arguments. Regime change bringing democracy. This is the ‘just cause’ from here on out. The antecedent to the above, I think was pointed out by Gen. Butler first in his war racket writings. What else is oil related, but falls under ‘just cause’? Perhaps the largest military exer in Saudi Arabia. I believe one of the royals stated: Bashar can be elected out or forced out, either way the goal is his removal. There is speculation that should SA invade Syria oil prices should increase. When I read things like this I always think of Howard Zinn saying that one of the most important things people can do in response to the war on terror is to study history. There is a generation of Americans which doesn’t know that these are not normal times. patrick mcneal larry I was just finishing up with the peoples history of the US and it’s pretty much SOP. The ruling class wants to maintain or expand it’s reach and it whips up the poor with fear and sends them off to subjugate a bunch who doesn’t want to give up their counties resources and become a captive market. owen larry … excellent point larry. recently finished the WikiLeaks Files with overviews of the cables leaked giving a bit of perspective to Empire U$A … brilliant resource, insightful analysis and pretty hard to contest the contents of diplomatic cables. y’all should get y’all-selves a copy and enjoy. nfjtakfa I’m thankful some of us do see something that’s disturbing and dangerous and even criminally, murderously odd. I also have to wonder if the Pentagon, and many Americans, might just believe we’ve been at war in Somalia since the 1993 Battles of Mogadishu, and everyone’s “Black Hawk Down” programming. Thank you as always, Mr. Glenn, for wanting facts and the truth. 24b4Jeff Nice piece, as usual, Glenn. At this point the intelligence community should have zero credibility with the press, having previously claimed that wedding parties and funerals they attacked were groups of terrorists. They might be right this time, but certainly there is no evidence of it. We have all read the claims that killing innocent people with drone strikes is counterproductive, and that we should not be attacking countries we are not at war with simply because our enemies are there, but apparently the supporters of such policies are unconvinced. Perhaps a quick history lesson might help. During the time Nixon was president, the US started secretly bombing Cambodia and Laos in a failed attempt to disrupt the North Vietnamese supply lines. Pressure was brought to unseat Prince Sihanouk, based on the false premise that he could stop the flow of arms but didn’t, and as a result, the Khumer Rouge came to power, and committed a genocide, killing some 3 million people before they were done. Now Nixon (following Kissinger’s advice) was not personally involved in the killings, of course, but he was the facilitator, just as Obama is now the facilitator of the rise of Jihad in Africa. Years from now I am sure debates will rage among historians about what came first, the terrorists or the drones. But in any event it is clear that the policy of killing everyone perceived by the Dr. Strangeloves of our intelligence and military communities is going to fail, if for no other reason than that there will come to be more enemies than Hellfire missiles to shoot at them. It is especially troubling that Americans seem to be clamoring for a President who is even more eager than Obama to deploy American force across the globe. It is highly likely that the never-ending war on terror will ramp up next February so that the new President (whoever he or she may be) can soar in the popularity polls. feline16 JP @JP – You said exactly what I’ve been feeling. I’m very concerned about the future considering the kind of things going on now, and the rhetoric that leads me to believe , as you do, that we might get a Pres. even more war-like and un-interested in things such as human rights. Very concerning times, indeed. Home run piece by Glenn. I hope folks start paying attention. S feline16 Maybe we should start convincing people at home that maybe carrying out their mental anxieties on the actual lives of people elsewhere is something they should stop doing and now feline16 S @S – Who cares who they are? USA is the number one killer in the world. USA. USA The reason the US is in Somalia is the usual reason: It’s trying to prop up and defend a “government” it has set up there with the help of the “international community” (meaning, other corrupt regimes that go along with it). As usual, imperialism results in political violence from the locals, which is in turn used to justify further imperialistic violence. ghostyghost “”The U.S. bombed an area controlled by al Shabaab. But they exaggerated the figure of casualties. We never gather 100 fighters in one spot for security reasons. We know the sky is full of planes,” the group’s military spokesman Sheikh Abdiasis Abu Musab told Reuters. Read more at: http://www.standardmedia.co.ke/?articleID=2000194228&story_title=al-shabaab-confirm-u-s-strike-in-somalia-say-casualties-exaggerated&pageNo=1” Does this not count as verification? Also note that Shabaab has not claimed any non-combatants were killed. The article also states that the Somali government approved and aided in providing intelligence for the airstrike. -Mona- ghostyghost Assume for the sake of argument it’s true that we bombed Al Shabaab fighters. What are we doing in Somalia? When did we declare war there? May the president send troops wherever s/he wishes and then kill people claiming self-defense? If so, what of the constitutional requirement for congressional declaration of war? http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/2863.htm And according the Secretary of State’s official position we are just now restoring diplomatic and consular relations with Somalia. We barely do any business with Somalia. And we don’t have any reciprocal defense treaties with Somalia, so what exactly is in America’s nominal “national interest” that it would pick sides in what amounts to another civil war in a land far away from ours–“humanitarian”, “national building”, “terrorism”. Fair enough, but color me unimpressed with the uneven application of those ideas or terms over the entirety of America’s history as justification for America’s military involvements all over the globe. The Idiot has spoken! “We barely do any business with Somalia. And we don’t have any reciprocal defense treaties with Somalia, so what exactly is in America’s nominal “national interest” that it would pick sides in what amounts to another civil war in a land far away from ours–“humanitarian”, “national building”, “terrorism”.” Because one party in that conflict Al Shabab has provided assistance and continues to provide assistance to an organization that has killed and is willing to kill as many US citizens as possible with complete disregard to other citizens. The Intercept is where dumb ass lawyers reunite. Mona the irrational anti American idiot lawyer. Rrheard the emotional dumb ass lawyer who starts talking about his life and his dog when he gets upset. Presumptuous Insect rrheard TimN truth&Freedom There’s something wrong with you. One cannot expect an idiot to know the answers to these extremely simple questions. An idiot cannot analyze by herself, so she just repeats what others are saying. “What are we doing in Somalia? When did we declare war there?” The United States and the African Union is in Somalia at the request of the internationally recognized government of Somalia. The government of Somalia requested military support to stop a terrorist group responsible for massacring Somali citizens and providing assistance to Al Qaeda that has massacred civilians in the US, Kenya, Tanzania, Indonesia, U.K…Some nations request military assistance to fight terrorism and some request law enforcement assistance. As an idiot you cannot make the difference between a state of war with a nation and military assistance request by a nation. The US is not at war with Afghanistan neither, it is not at war with Iraq, Colombia or the Philippines. Now as an anti American idiot and an irrational terrorist sympathizer you need to do like Greenwald to improve your pathetic argument. Start by redefining terrorism, and then rejecting the legitimacy of all those governments so you can feel in your narrow minded brain of yours that the US should not target those who are assisting the ones who killed 2000 of its citizens. Equally boring. Still waiting for you to take me up on my offer. Still haven’t seen hide nor hair of your cowardly self at my door or in my inbox. Oops he is upset again. That is called a counter offer. You offered 5000. I offered 50,000. That should be the easiest 50,000 you would ever make. Again, if you are serious I will send my name post address and you send me a full contract for review. My 50,000 will be in an US escrow account next week. If you cannot gamble this kind of money, then stay away from the big boys and take a walk with your dog. I already explained why you should be willing to do it for $5K unless you’re a coward and hypocrite. Offer stands. I’ll wait. The idiot, emotional lawyer is also a broke ass lawyer!! -Mona- rrheard rr, I strongly recommend ignoring this person. He craves negative attention and pollutes the threads. Don’t feed him. U.S. involvement in Somalia and Ethiopia began as a proxy war against the Soviet Union decades ago. This conflict has gotten so perverted for so long I can’t even remember which country belonged to the U.S. and which to the U.S.S.R., the evil twins destroying our planet. The U.S. is not at war in Somalia. Congress has never declared war on Somalia, nor has it authorized the use of military force there. Morality and ethics to the side for the moment: what legal authority does Obama even possess to bomb this country? I assume we can all agree that Presidents shouldn’t be permitted to just go around killing people they suspect are “bad”: they need some type of legal authority to do the killing. If Twitter is any indication, you are wrong to assume “we” all agree to that. Apparently, we are “at war with terror” wherever the president says it is found, and may bomb whenever he says we have to kill “terrorists.” Legal authorization isn’t up to the job of dealing with this kind of “war.” The president has this authority because he has it. CAF -Mona- I see; you want an abject dictatorship. -Mona- CAF Moi? No. LOL I’m describing some of the responses I saw on Twitter, including from Hillary supporters and a New Atheist guy. They don’t appear to endorse any legal limits on who the Executive may bomb. Brilliant piece Glenn. Tragically and immorally I’d argue, the vast majority of Americans simply do not care who its government kills so long as it doesn’t directly impact “their daily way of life” and/or they don’t have to push the little red button themselves. The vast majority of Americans will simply assume, without any evidence whatsoever, that their proxy/placeholder sitting on the Royal American Throne will always do what is in every American’s best interest to perpetuate the collective perception of “keeping us all safe”. That so many Americans are unconcerned if not wholly disinterested in even talking about these issues is what is truly frightening to me. What does it say about a nation of people who are so fundamentally indifferent to the lives of others who do not have the good fortune to be born or naturalized citizens of America? What does it say about a nation where some significant minority of its population, who do care, are totally powerless to do anything to change its government’s actions? I’ve often said over the years around here, and often, that it never ever confused or surprised me how otherwise seemingly decent “modern” “civilized human beings” like the 1930-40s people of Germany could engage in the wholesale slaughter of other human beings. All they needed to do is look in the mirror. When a society becomes so inured to violence, is so economically unstable for long enough, and so indifferent to the lives of those they see as “other”, that’s when bad bad things happen in the world. Maybe it isn’t fair to put America’s conduct since 1945 on that same level. But between America’s historical sins of extermination of indigenous peoples, wholesale enslavement of another, and the wars in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan and their decades of violent acts in South and Central America–that argument isn’t entirely without merit. It may be born of different qualitatively different motivations or in pursuit of slightly different objectives, but the end result is very much the same for the objects of our aggression and the manner in which we think we are entitled to preserve our “way of life”. Truly disturbing and heartbreaking in so many ways. Of course I’m leaving out Korea, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and a long long laundry list of nations we’ve engaged in the killing its people in service of our nominal “national interest” but I was just trying to make a point with creating an exhaustive list. OuijaForestCat Of course Democrats are outraged by Donald Trump’s barbaric promise to bring back torture because that’s an issue that Democrats can exploit for political advantage. But when a sitting Democratic president kills 150 people on the basis of no evidence and dubious legality, the response is crickets chirping. The Democratic Party operates in a moral vacuum. If torture starts polling well enough I fully expect Hillary Clinton to soften her opposition to it. Jose OuijaForestCat If torture starts polling well It polls pretty well as it is. Vic Perry “widespread Democratic indifference to the killing of foreigners where there’s no partisan advantage to be had against the GOP from pretending to care” One major advantage of having a Republican president over Hillary would be the return of liberal pretend care…..to be honest though, I was still enough of a sucker during the Bush admin to think it was not just “pretend” care JS Vic Perry Totally agree! My aunt was the most antiwar person you could imagine until the day after Obama took office. Then it was different. OuijaForestCat Vic Perry I always suspected there was a lot of liberal pretend care back in the Bush years, but I vastly underestimated just how much. All those huge antiwar rallies with their ten of thousands of marchers now look like exercises in concern trolling. President Trump may cause a resurgence in the antiwar movement but I won’t be gullible enough to trust the motives of the people around me next time. rrheard OuijaForestCat @ Ouija, Jose, JS, and Vic Perry Couldn’t agree with you more. Truly disturbing. Where does Black Lives Matter stand on this? subbob Lin Ming Are you a Truth&Amp wanna-be? It remains to be seen if you are a new troll or one who was banned under another name. -Mona- subbob Why would a commenter asking what BLM’s position is be a troll? Somalia is an African country. nuf said -Mona- Macroman trolled Jenna’s piece earlier and I read Min Ling’s comment the same way Subbob did. subbob -Mona- Mona: I am going by the totality of Ming’s posts, not just this one. subbob subbob Maybe I over-reacted because my wife is a Black South African. Maybe. nuf said subbob Lin ming sounds/trolls like macroman. Pseudo-intellectual dis; not even good snark. Macroman nuf said You are every bit the linguistic analyst you are the logician. nuf said Macroman Let me direct your attention toward temporal logic. Simply stated, which may or may not be at a level you are able to comprehend, once a condition has been set it remains set until it is cleared. All subsequent events are subject to previous set-states. Perhaps tutoring services in the campus library might sharpen your tool … or are you too busy moving goalposts for students? I don’t have to sit through your class to know the answer … your self-inflation is quite evident, big man. Check the comments to the last article, where I correct Lin Ming on his/her response to Sulzer. Then come back with some more “temporal logic.” I expect you’ll blame my cleverness, having preempted your retarded (oh sorry, logical) claim that I’m Lin Ming before you made the charge. I’m prescient like that. …once a condition has been set it remains set until it is cleared. Are you claiming that your assertion that I am Lin Ming is an established condition? Strange for someone as smart as you claim you are. Did you call the police? As impressed as I am with your refined understanding of the meaning of the prefix “macro,” as a friendly FYI, I do not use “Macroman” to mean “big man” but as “man that is a macroeconomist.” Also, as constructive criticism, you might want to try to be less formulaic. All your responses to me seem to follow the same script. “I’m smart. You’re stupid. Rhetorical questions that only the author could laugh at. Big man.” A bit repetitive, you might admit. Hope that helps. Happy trolling. Macroman Macroman In a truly fortuitous coincidence, Lin Ming’s last comment and mine were both posted at exactly 2:36 PM. Here’s where you apply your vaunted “temporal logic” and issue an apology to the big man. Or just keep stomping your foot. Hmmmm, what will nuf said do???? Macroman Obama currently has a 51% approval rating. I’d wager this latest drone attack won’t lower it. I’d also wager that any of the three people that could conceivably be our next president wouldn’t have made the same call. If you kill innocent people, there is no backlash. If you fail to kill the will-be-imminently guilty, there will be. So I blame 51% of U.S. citizens. Obama is just a tool. “Ronald Reagan was an actor, not at all a factor Just an employee of the country’s real masters Just like the Bushes, Clinton and Obama Just another talking head telling lies on teleprompters” Killer Mike (Sanders supporter!), Reagan Glenn, please note the Hillary/DNC types are all agog about this by Barbara Starr First on CNN: Top ISIS leader may have been killed in U.S. airstrike Do you suppose ISIS has as many “top leaders” as AQ has “seconds in command?” Baby Gerald -Mona- From that article on CNN: ‘There has been a $5 million reward on his [the presumed dead ISIS leader] head from the U.S. State Department. Shishani is a former member of an elite Georgian military unit. ‘ Since when has it been considered legitimate practice to put bounties on peoples’ heads? Does Putin have a list of bounties for people the Russian government wants dead? How about the Chinese? Does Angela Merkel have a list of heads she wants collected? Maybe there’s a strong market for international bounty hunters or do we have that market cornered? -Mona- Baby Gerald That’s an excellent question and I wondered why I had not heard of this before? Hughie -Mona- The US forces paid bounties to local warlords in Afghanistan. That’s why there were so many prisoners in Guantanamo. But you knew that already. -Mona- Hughie Yes, I did know that. Congress authorized military force in Afghanistan. What is the authority for offering bounties on the lives of individuals in countries with whom we are not at war? Roch -Mona- US is ‘at war’ because it makes us llok good or important o some other men–never you mind the fact that in the past 60y we have NOT won one!	cc/2019-30/en_middle_0059.json.gz/line1840
__label__wiki	0.52972	0.52972	Category Archives: Carl Icahn Posted by theinvesmentman in Atacama Desert, Atkins, Australia, Baker Tilly International, Beowulf Mining, BHP Billiton, Brian Gladden, Carl Icahn, Dell, Lloyds Banking Group, Michael Dell, Moss & Associates, OZ Minerals, Personal computer, Private equity, Range Resources, Rio Tinto Group, RSM Tenon, Sweden, Takeover, Texas, Wall Street Atacama Desert, Atkins, Australia, Baker Tilly International, Beowulf Mining, BHP Billiton, Brian Gladden, Carl Icahn, Dell, Lloyds Banking Group, Michael Dell, Moss & Associates, OZ Minerals, Personal computer, Private equity, Range Resources, Rio Tinto Group, RSM Tenon, Sweden, Takeover, Texas, Wall Street The FTSE 100 is flatlining following yesterday’s fall, after Asian markets and Wall Street dropped on expectation that the Fed will taper QE sooner than originally anticipated after promising economic data. Workers at the world’s biggest copper mine, in Chile’s Atacama Desert, have returned to work after an unannounced 24-hour stoppage. BHP Billiton (BLT), which controls the mine, has yet to respond to their demands for better pay, an annual bonus and improved working conditions. Workers will have another meeting on Friday night to decide whether to go on strike again. Rio Tinto (RIO) also holds a 30 per cent stake in the mine. Surgical Innovations (SUN)said it had made a strong first half, and that it continues to trade in line with market expectations. Revenues for the six months were 28 per cent ahead of the same period last year at £3.88m, while adjusted cash profits were £1.14m. WS Atkins (ATK) said it has signed an agreement to dispose of the ongoing operations of Peter Brown, its US construction management at risk business, to Moss & Associates. As part of this agreement, Atkins will pay Moss £2.6m. Atkins expects to report a loss on disposal of approximately £3.0m in respect of the transaction. Iron ore explorer Beowulf Mining (BEM) has delivered strong initial assay results from its drilling programme at Kallak South in northern Sweden. Results include one inclined drill hole with a long intercept of 89.46 metres at about 32.1 per cent iron, while a section in the same hole returned the highest ever recorded iron content from the Kallak South deposit to date of 55.9 per cent iron. Australian miner OZ Minerals is currently carrying out due diligence onHerncia Resources’ (HER) iron oxide copper gold project in northern Chile with a view to taking a majority stake. The existing joint venture will expand to include the larger project area. Under the terms of the original joint venture agreement, OZ will spend $3m over 20 months to earn a 51 per cent share of Guamanga. That stake will rise to 80 per cent if the Australian firm spends an additional $5m over 24 months. Range Resources (RRL) has responded to recent weakness in its share price, saying it is not aware of any particular event that would account for this share price weakness. The company confirmed that it is focused on ramping-up production from its operations in Trinidad, where production has increased by over 30 per cent since April The UK’s only listed accountancy practice RSM Tenon (TNO) said that takeover talks with rival Baker Tilly were continuing, but any deal is likely to result in minimal value for shareholders. The highly indebted company revealed last month that it had received an unsolicited approach from Baker Tilly, but a potential transaction would require the support of its sole lender Lloyds Banking Group (LLOY). Dell’s quarterly profit has plunged 72pc from a year ago as the struggling computer giant was hit by weak PC sales. Profit for the second quarter fell to $204m, compared with $732m in the same period last year, although the results were slightly better than analyst estimates. Rio Tinto posts record iron production (bigpondnews.com) Banks and miners drag market lower (news.theage.com.au) Stocks to watch on Tuesday (news.smh.com.au) Aust share market is slightly higher (news.theage.com.au) What Australia’s Election Means For Miners: J.P.Morgan (blogs.wsj.com) Rio Tinto half-year profit plunges by 71 per cent (abc.net.au) ‘Klondike laws’ spur Swedish fury at miners (thelocal.se) Call for actions in #kallak Gállok. Spread the word! (kolonierna.wordpress.com) Mining at ‘Breaking Point’ as Investors Flee, Gold Fields Says (bloomberg.com) Mongolia says Rio Tinto copper mine can start shipments to China (emergingfrontiersblog.com)	cc/2019-30/en_middle_0059.json.gz/line1841
__label__wiki	0.82146	0.82146	« UK’s oldest document reveals ancient Brexit uncertainty \| Sir Philip Green demands commons inquiry consist of his friends » Officials warn of ‘terror and violence’ at Euro 2016 They just want to be close to the players – it’s easier to glass them that way Football officials have issued a warning that Euro 2016 may be beset by violence, after it transpired that many England fans would be travelling to watch their team get knocked out in the first round. Jacques Fromage, head of UEFA, said “The French police predict that the championship will be marred by terrifying acts of violence; with drunken Englishmen rampaging through towns, throwing chairs through windows, and beating up Johnny Foreigners, whilst singing ‘Vindaloo’ at the tops of their voices. “We must be vigilant.” England fans are expected to be relatively restrained, until defeated in their first match against Russia, frustrated and lairy after their loss to Wales, and then apoplectic after losing to Slovakia. Fan Will Bashman said “I’m bringing several of my favourite knuckledusters, and a bottle that I managed to break into the perfect stabby shape. That takes some skill, you know. That’ll teach them to beat us at a game we hold as our national sport, even though we can’t play it! “I’ve also had ‘fuck off frenchie’ tattooed on my forehead – although when I looked in the mirror it looked like the artist has done it backwards. I’m going to check with a friend, as soon as I find one who can read.” But some people have suggested that it is not fair or accurate to say at the outset that England fans will necessarily be disappointed. England manager Roy Hodgson said “This is scaremongering. You’re just basing it all on the assumption that we’ll go straight out, leaving fans aggressively disillusioned. “I mean, obviously it’s pretty much certain that that will happen, but it’s not nice of you to just go around saying it.” Posted on June 7, 2016 at 2:46 pm in Society, Sport \| RSS feed You can trackback from your own site. Tags: England 2016, England vs Russia, England vs Slovakia, England vs Wales, English football fans, English hooligans, Euro 2016, Euro 2016 terror, Roy Hodgson	cc/2019-30/en_middle_0059.json.gz/line1846
__label__cc	0.596546	0.403454	Wapic drives new service paradigm in claims payment in Insurance Until the unforeseen happens and a remit is required, the importance of holding an insurance policy hardly crosses anyone’s mind. With a cover at hand, the burden of searching for a bailout is lightened by the possibility of making claims on the insurer, but a greater heartbreak occurs when the insured does not get reprieve for their held policy. The disillusionment and agony suffered by policy holders in situations like this have impaired the reputation of insurance industry across the world, especially in Africa, with Nigeria as a reference because of the size of its economy, and the expectation of what the industry should be doing in the available landscape of opportunities. Unsurprisingly, distrust and disbelief are some of the dominant epithets that describe customers’ feelings towards insurance companies and their offerings. Though some instances of unsettled claims are attributable to ‘process issues and technicalities’, clients procured policies to cover them in the rainy days when emergencies rear their ugly heads and do not expect the route to succour to be convoluted anytime the journey becomes necessary. Unwittingly, most players in the sector do not see the opportunities in removing the barriers between policyholders and access to claims, but continue to rue the poor fortune compared to that of its first cousin, banking, where technological transformations and customers’ pain-points analysis have boosted process efficiency and made services not just desirable, but more enjoyable through quality experience. Amid this gloom, there is an emergent star in Wapic Insurance Plc, shining brightly to provide the long-sought illumination for the industry. For insurance, clients in Nigeria, the 60-year-old insurer has become the example of the intervention expected from an insurance company since the take-off of its transformation agenda. With the articulation of a strategic direction for the company, its new owners and management, boasting history of accomplishments in the financial services sector including banking, identified for resolution a number of legacy issues, amongst which claims settlement was utmost. As a result of this effort, claims pay-out has risen to N10.6 billion. Resolution of some outstanding and disputed claims became possible with a record N2.13 billion claims in 2013. “The issues at Wapic Insurance upon our arrival were reflective of the problems facing the insurance sector in Nigeria,” the Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Wapic Insurance Plc, Mrs. Adeyinka Adekoya, said. She, however, said: “We are motivated by our transformation objectives; we carried out a diagnosis of the situation and discovered that a huge barrier sprouts between insurance companies and policy holders soon after insurance policies are purchased. “This situation might not be created knowingly, but it is the reality of what non-human-centred organisational processes have created and the misunderstanding that ensued from inadequate engagement with insurance customers.” Lamenting the situation, Adekoya said that policy holders experience anguish when the need to extract benefits of their contracts with insurance firms arises. However, there seems to be a reawakening in the industry that has put customer satisfaction and service experience at the heart of the revolution. As the signpost for service excellence in the insurance industry, Wapic’s quest for restoration of industry reputation has yielded significant benefits after a year of a rigorous process review and extensive claims audit. The exercise, undertaken to provide succour to insurance clients and set the practice on a world-class standard, manifested in then progressive growth in the company’s paid claims, from N1.63 billion in 2015, N2.86 billion in 2016 to N3.06 billion in 2017. This commendable growth is a valid testament to the company’s commitment to value creation and exemplary customer experience role. With its recent digital revolution, culminating in the acquisition of a new core operating system and iPortal’, the interface between the company and its customers will become more effectual with latent phenomenal influence on claims settlement process. This is predicated on the envisaged similarities between the impact of this strategic corporate undertaking and the effects online real-time systems had on the banking sector. The insurance application, which is configured to ensure that interactions with Wapic Insurance is most enjoyable and reinforces the company’s status as the most resourceful underwriter in the industry, is the beginning of digital revolution in the sector. By this, Wapic insurance has again played its industry-confidence restoration role through new service paradigm hinged on innovation, empathy and efficiency. Meanwhile, in the financial year ended December 31, 2017, Wapic Insurance post-tax profit grew to N1.5 billion, from N586m, which is 161 per cent increase over the previous year’s figure. This excellent performance cuts-across the entire business lines, resulting in 9.9 per cent total revenue growth, from N12.4 billion to N13.6 billion and 22.5 per cent increase in Gross Written Premium, from N8 billion to N9.8 billion. Impressively, the efficiency of the company’s operations, which delivered remarkable financial performance, also manifested in other critical growth indices. A review of this record performance that signposts Wapic Insurance’s steady, but certain ascension to industry leadership showed that total assets increased by 10.4 per cent, from N25.90 billion to N28.60 billion. Likewise, shareholders’ funds swelled to N17.95 billion from N16.50 billion, just as there was a 12.5 per cent increase in policy-holders’ funds, from N7.2 billion to N8.2 billion. While the across-the-board growth recorded by the insurer attested to the success of its 2014-2019 corporate strategic plan, the 13.3 per cent increase in paid claims from N2.85 billion to N3.23bn sends an unequivocal message about the company’s capacity, ability and resolve to meet and fulfil valid obligations in a timely manner. ‘Nigeria’s entertainment/media industry revenue’ll hit $9.9b by 2022’ Widow arrested for biting house-help in Onitsha Delta Rep gets support for re-election	cc/2019-30/en_middle_0059.json.gz/line1848
__label__wiki	0.796113	0.796113	Νοέμβριος 9, 2017 Οκτώβριος 24, 2018 Deutsche Bank chief hints at thousands of job losses Cryan sees tech bringing lender into line with peers at ‘half’ its 97,000 headcount Author: Laura Noonan, Patrick Jenkins and Olaf Storbeck Posted on: Financial Times \| October 8th, 2017 The chief executive of Deutsche Bank has given his clearest hint yet that his bank could cut tens of thousands more jobs as it turns to technology to bring costs into line with sharply lower revenues. “We employ 97,000 people,” John Cryan told the Financial Times. “Most big peers have more like half that number.” Deutsche has made about 4,000 of the 9,000 job cuts promised under a five-year restructuring plan announced in late 2015. MrCryan said many of the additional cuts would come through using technology to boost efficiency in the bank’s processes. “There we’ve got the most to gain,” he said. “We’re too manual, which can make you error-prone and it makes you inefficient. There’s a lot of machine learning and mechanisation that we can do.” MrCryan said the ratio of front office, revenue-generating staff, to back office people who keep the bank’s systems running, was “out of kilter” at Deutsche. While Jes Staley, Barclays’ new chief executive, tackled the high cost base he inherited with a hiring freeze, MrCryan described Deutsche as having a “hiring frost”. Once the world’s biggest investment bank, Deutsche’s star has been on the wane for years as post-crisis regulation made the bank’s mighty fixed income business less profitable and big misconduct fines and high legacy costs hit the bottom line. Despite a vow to cut €3bn from its cost base under Strategy 2020, the German lender made a return on tangible equity of 4 per cent for the third quarter of this year, far short of its medium-term 10 per cent target. MrCryan, who has raised €8bn of capital since he took over Deutsche in mid-2015 and has settled many of the bank’s most painful litigation issues, has come under fire from investors over Deutsche’s poor operating performance. The bank’s share price has almost halved under his tenure. Critics have questioned his blunt messaging, which they say has demotivated staff, contributing to key departures and a decline in revenue. At a conference in September, he said the bank’s accountants “spend a lot of the time basically being an abacus” and were ripe for being automated. The plain-speaking Briton told the FT there was “an easy” opportunity to save money by collaborating with rivals in the area of crime prevention and detection. “Every bank at the moment has a huge and burgeoning department of people who are doing the same stuff. It’s not a source of competitive advantage and you’re exposed to making your own mistakes.” Last month, Deutsche promised savings of €900m from integrating its retail network with that of Postbank, its German retail banking subsidiary, which it originally planned to spin off but decided this year to keep. The cuts will take three to four years for Deutsche to fully realise. MrCryan said there was a lot of scope to close branches, suggesting many Postbank customers could be shifted online. “The truth is if I went to a load of branches, I’d wait quite a lot of the day before I encountered [any] customers. They just don’t come in as often as they used to.” Read at: https://www.ft.com/content/e7844048-c3e5-11e7-a1d2-6786f39ef675 Posted in Θέμα της ΗμέραςTagged banking sector, cutting down on costs, Deutsche Bank, job cuts, mechanization, restructuring programBy teamsafia Προηγούμενο άρθροΠροηγούμενο China to maintain macroeconomic policy in 2018 Επόμενο άρθροΕπόμενη EU to spend €800 million on alternative fuel infrastructure	cc/2019-30/en_middle_0059.json.gz/line1852
__label__wiki	0.750522	0.750522	Elizabeth Banks’ Thriller ‘Brightburn’ Gets Another Trailer John Stewart March 6, 2019 Slanted > Film > Elizabeth Banks’ Thriller ‘Brightburn’ Gets Another Trailer If you ever wondered what would happen if you mixed Superman with a horror-thriller, you might want to give “Brightburn” a try. The new movie is coming out this May, and Sony Pictures has a new video to entice fans. This is the second official trailer that Sony Pictures has released for the film, which offers thriller fans something to look forward to this Spring. The studio teased the movie on social media asking “What if a child from another world crash-landed on Earth, but instead of becoming a hero to mankind, he proved to be something far more sinister?” The movie stars Elizabeth Banks, David Denman, Jackson A. Dunn, Matt Jones, and Meredith Hagner. David Yarovesky directed the film for the studio, working off a script written by Mark and Brian Gunn. “Brightburn” is opening in theaters against the James Gray sci-fi thriller “Ad Astra” with Brad Pitt, and Disney’s live-action adaptation of “Aladdin.” That’s the same weekend that Olivia Wilde’s comedy “Booksmart” hits theaters. That film stars Will Forte, Lisa Kudrow, and Jason Sudeikis. These films will have to battle the previous week’s releases, which include “John Wick Chapter 3,” “A Dog’s Journey,” and “A Sun is Also a Star,” which could split the box office during “Brightburn’s” crowded release. The week following “Brightburn’s” release isn’t any easier, with “Godzilla: King of the Monsters,” “Ma,” and the musical “Rocketman” hitting theaters nationwide. Elizabeth Banks recently voiced the role of Wyldstyle in “The LEGO Movie 2,” a film that has already made over $153.7M worldwide. Banks also directed the new “Charlies Angels” reboot, which she will star in as Bosely. The Angels will be played by Naomi Scott, Kristen Stewart, and Ella Balinska. The reboot is also from Sony Pictures and is currently scheduled to hit theaters on November 1, 2019. “Brightburn” will release in theaters on May 24, 2019. Want another trailer? You can find more Movie Trailers to watch. Tags : Movie TrailersSony Pictures John Stewart March 6, 2019 Austin Butler to Play Elvis Presley in Biopic with Tom Hanks Awkwafina’s ‘The Farewell’ Tops ‘Avengers’ Theater Average Record Oliver Jackson-Cohen to Star in ‘The Invisible Man’ Spielberg’s ‘West Side Story’ Offers First Look at Ariana DeBose as Anita Jason Blum’s ‘The Hunt’ Tracks Down a First Look Trailer Sith Troopers Head to Comic-Con for ‘Rise of the Skywalker’ ‘Dora and the Lost City of Gold’ Discovers a New Trailer Charlize Theron and Helen Mirren Return for ‘Fast & Furious 9’ Renée Zellweger Hits the Stage in ‘Judy’ Trailer ‘Maleficent: Mistress of Evil’ Conjures up a new Trailer Disney Shares a ‘Mulan’ Teaser Trailer with Yifei Liu Marvel Studios Returns to Comic-Con for a Surprise Hall H Panel ‘Aladdin’ Nears $900M at the Box Office ‘Spider-Man Far From Home’ Swings Towards Independence Day Record	cc/2019-30/en_middle_0059.json.gz/line1855
__label__wiki	0.833521	0.833521	2018 National Water Awards winners: Where are they now? in Innovation 2018 Australian Water Awards winners. From the business setting new safety standards to the young water professional advancing the industry, the Australian Water Association’s (AWA) Water Awards celebrate the individuals and teams doing fantastic things in the water sector. Each year, hundreds of water professionals compete in the state and territory awards programs, with the winners going on to vie for the national titles, which are announced at the AWA’s annual conference, Ozwater. With nominations for the 2019 state awards now open, we take a look at what the 2018 National Water Awards winners, announced at Ozwater’18, have been up to since taking home the top prize. Infrastructure Project Innovation Award Sundrop Farms Project, John Holland Group (SA) John Holland was the EPC contractor for the Sundrop Farms project, which involved the design and construction of 20 hectares of climate controlled greenhouses and a 39-Megawatt Solar Thermal Energy System. The system is used to sustainably produce 15,000 tonnes of truss tomatoes per year for markets across Australia. Since winning the award, Mal Shepherd, General Manager, Water Services said the John Holland Water Services team has been busy listening to the issues facing its customers, in particular the impacts of climate change. “Our people continue to apply adaptive and innovative thinking, which allows us to put forward solutions that deliver resilient and sustainable outcomes,” Shepherd said. “We have been working to develop a significant pump hydro scheme in Queensland [and] we continue to deliver other complex projects around Australia. “One of the most significant of these has been the 270km Wentworth to Broken Hill Pipeline project for WaterNSW, which will give drought-stricken communities secure and reliable access to water for the first time.” The team has also completed the Sydney Desalination Plant rebuild, as Sydney moves into a period of water scarcity, and has made good progress on the Murray Bridge wastewater treatment project for SA Water. “Winning awards such as the AWA Infrastructure Project Innovation Award is wonderful recognition of all the organisations and people involved,” Shepherd said. “Being an award winner creates opportunities for both people and organisations to showcase to others what is possible. “We have been able to use the project and the award recognition as an example of our capability and capacity to develop, deliver and commission projects of global significance. We have moved into international markets and the award strengthens our credentials with potential customers as we compete for new business. “The awards present an opportunity to collaborate with clients and partners to communicate to the industry what you are doing.” Program Innovation Award: Community Leak Program, Living Water Smart Power & Water Corporation (NT) Launched in January 2017, the community leak program provided community-wide leak-checking services, leak awareness campaigns and a $200 Leak Find and Fix rebate. The program has identified and fixed over a billion litres of water leaks across the community. The project is a component of the Power and Water’s demand management program, the Living Water Smart program. Power and Water Project Lead Jethro Laidlaw said the utility had three main drivers for launching the leak program: customers, deferring capital, and emergency response to contamination. “By detecting billions of litres of water leaks, it’s obviously really helped our customers who are paying for this water,” Laidlaw said. “But it also helped us defer investment on a new dam in Darwin; we managed to defer a huge capital spend. “Furthermore, with Katherine’s surface water supply contaminated with PFAS, we wanted to ensure the water we do have is used as efficiently as possible so that we can ensure Katherine has drinkable water supplies. Our project has had a positive public health outcome as well.” Since winning the AWA award, Power and Water went on to win a global Special Achievement Award through its software company GIS. “GIS used us as a case study and made a video about our program, which was great,” Laidlaw said. “We got a lot of media coverage; the NT News stopped talking about crocodiles for a minute, which is hard to do in the NT News!” Laidlaw said the award also gave the business the opportunity to talk more about saving water, which was great for the program’s goals. “Further to that, our customers see that Power and Water are winning awards and that we’re being recognised for customer service, which offers our corporation and our program really positive coverage,” he said. “It’s given us a lot of exposure for what we do; it has let our customers know that we’re doing the best we can to service the community.” Research Innovation: Purple phototrophic bacteria for resource recovery from wastewater The University of Queensland and CRC for Water Sensitive Cities (QLD) Developing a world-first technology for a next-generation resource recovery process, the UQ CRC for Water Sensitive Cities’ research has the potential to recover vital fertiliser compounds, bioplastics and provide a sustainable animal feed source. Damien Batstone from the UQ’s Advanced Water Management Centre said the direction of the project has been changing. “Originally, we were looking at treating domestic wastewater through a completely new process, able to recover nutrients and everything else,” Batstone said. “We had the idea to digest the byproduct into methane, and run the front end of the process using the energy. “We needed to get digestion up to 100% at the back end, to make the front end work. We’re close to that goal now, but there’s been a big shift in international focus on resource recovery with a focus on value-added products. “So now we have changed direction; instead of just making energy, we have much more of a focus on renewable chemicals, biofeeds and other value-added products.” He said this means the product is a lot more homogeneous and predictable. They have active projects in a lot of areas, including using industrial wastewater and agri-industrial wastewater to generate animal feeds. “We’re generating a biosource product, which we’ve tested as a barramundi feed, and it performed pretty well,” Batstone said. “The aim there is to displace fish meal, which is a very high intensity product that’s not very sustainable. We’ve also received a federal government grant from Department of Agriculture to progress this work as well.” Winning the award led to a number of opportunities, including a partnership with GHD. “On the Ozwater’18 awards night, Tim Huelsen, our principal researcher, actually connected with GHD and AquaTech,” Batstone said. “They went on to put together a Queensland Government fellowship, which places Tim within GHD and AquaTech over the next two years, to look at scaling up this technology. That was a contact that was made on the night, and then it was progressed over the following year.” Water Industry Safety Excellence: FCD Skyhook Mark 4 Fremantle Commercial Diving (WA) After several years of development, Fremantle Commercial Diving developed the Skyhook Mark 4, a unique truck mounted mobile fall arrest system, which provides a rated overhead anchor point for two people. The device set a new standard in safety for accessing elevated water tanks and is now in use around Australia. “It’s essentially a device that we take when we need to access the roof of water tanks,” Fremantle Commercial Diving Director Antony Old said. “It’s been an absolute game changer. It’s in huge demand and the people that use it, day in day out, just love the product because it saves them a lot of time and effort, and makes their rescue and safety capability literally as low as it can possibly be risk wise.” Following FCD’s success at Ozwater’18, the business went on to win the WorkSafe Invention of the Year. As well as the awards, Old said the company has been focusing heavily on another safety initiative, which is about replacing divers with robots for cleaning drinking water tanks. “What we’ve done is develop the world’s best underwater cleaning robots, and since doing that, the uptake from the water industry has been huge,” he said. “We’ve got robots cleaning tanks for utilities all over Australia, including Hunter Water, Icon Water, Queensland Urban Utilities and SA Water, as well as Water Corporation. “Water Corp are now looking at working with our organisation to significantly increase the number of tanks that can be cleaned robotically.” Old said winning the AWA award raised FCD’s profile within the water sector, and introduced the company to organisations who had significant problems they could help fix. “We spent years, and hundreds of thousands of dollars making this ‘unicorn’ piece of kit,” Old said. “And then all of a sudden it won a national award, and everyone went, ‘Wow, what’s this?’ Companies are now much more comfortable with letting us use our technology.” Water Professional of the Year: Ciara Sterling Head of Community Inclusion, Yarra Valley Water (VIC) With over 15 years’ experience in the water industry, Ciara is an industry leader in supporting customers experiencing vulnerability, hardship and family violence. She is the driving force behind Yarra Valley Water’s extremely successful WaterCare initiative and Head of the Thriving Communities Partnership, a cross-sectoral collaboration of organisations tackling the root causes of hardship and inequality. Young Water Professional of the Year: Katrin Doederer Research Fellow, The University of Queensland (QLD) Katrin demonstrated all the hallmarks of a very successful and committed early career professional. Not only has she rapidly developed from a successful PhD student to a highly regarded expert in the field of disinfection by-products in drinking water, she has also demonstrated her prowess as an effective communicator and productive project leader at the interface between research and practice. Student Water Prize: Sarah Aucote, Flinders University (SA) Smart monitoring for microbial risk assessment Sarah’s Honours project investigated assays targeting mitochondrial DNA as a new and novel approach to tracking sources of faecal contamination. Sarah’s research has potential to provide a decreased cost of performing microbial risk assessments, leading to widespread improvements in monitoring and risk management, which in turn will improve Health Based Target compliance, particularly in regional areas. Australian Stockholm Junior Water Prize: Minh Nga Nguyen, Sydney Girls High School (NSW) Recycling waste into biochar: a sustainable wastewater filter and fertiliser for the agricultural industry Nga’s project in biochar, a sustainable waste water filter and fertiliser for the agricultural industry, formed a model of application in which agricultural plant wastes are recycled into a multipurpose biochar charcoal. For more information about the Australian Water Awards, click here. A version of this story was first published as ‘Australian Water Awards’ in Current magazine April 2019. Tags: Australian Water AwardsOzwaterAwardsAustralian Water Association (AWA)Industry A rubbish idea: GPS-tracked bottles show how litter moves through Melbourne’s waterways Size no barrier to sustainability for North East Water DNA technology used to detect harmful bacteria in drinking water View from space provides insights for water management TRENDING TECHNOLOGY NEWS	cc/2019-30/en_middle_0059.json.gz/line1870
__label__cc	0.748859	0.251141	James Levin James Levin served as Chief Science Officer aboard the USS Isannah and USS Challenger. 2 Family History 4 Previous Tours Served 5 Personal History 6 Promotions 7 Professional History 8 Supplemental Date of Birth: 234303.12 Place of Birth: Kentucky, Earth Hair: Brown (parted to his right) Mother: Susan Levin (born 2313) nurse Father: Samuel Levin (born 2310) Professor of Federation History, University of Kentucky Siblings: None Spouse: Dr. Rachell Maiam Levin (born 234509.13, married 237505.22), resigned from Starfleet 237806.30) Children: Michael Jason Levin (born 237806.20) Current Rank: Lieutenant, junior grade Duty Post: Lecturer in Interstellar Law, Starfleet Academy, San Francisco, Earth Previous Tours Served USS Prophecy NX-1-9999, Science Officer, 237705.29 – 237708.13 Unassigned, aboard USS Isannah NCC-14988, 237708.13 – 237710.14 USS Isannah NCC-14988, 237710.14 - 237902.22 USS Ranger-A, 237902.22 - 237908.10 University of Pennsylvania, 2361-2364 Law School, University of California, 2364-2367 Graduate Courses, University of California, 2372-2373 Starfleet Academy, 2374-2377 Degrees Held B.A., Modern Political Science, University of Pennsylvania B.S., Astrophysics, University of Pennsylvania J.D., University of California, San Francisco School of Law M.S., Astrophysics, University of California B.S., Biological Studies, University of California Major, Science Qualifications, Starfleet Academy, focus in Astrophysics Minor, JAG Qualifications, Starfleet Academy, focus in Interstellar Law After graduating from law school, Levin worked at a small firm in San Francisco. After several months and having had time to gain his footing, Levin was first assigned to the case of a court-martialed Starfleet officer. After several years, he enrolled in graduate science courses, where he literally ran into Rachell Maiam, then working on her medical degree. Over time, defending court-martialed officers became his focus, and, amid the paranoia that swept much of the Federation, especially the Sol system, in the months and years leading up to the Dominion War, he began to feel that a number of his clients were being found guilty before their trials, leading to a growing paranoia only added to by the cryptic mutterings his father about “needing someone to guard the guards.” Despite his misgivings about certain things he’d encountered while in law, Levin and Maiam both submitted applications to Starfleet Academy following the outbreak of the Dominion War, and were accepted. They married during their time at the Academy. 237705.29 - 237708.13 USS Prophecy NX-1-9999 Science Officer USS Isannah NCC-14988 Chief Science Officer USS Ranger-A Professor of Interstellar Law Forced Leave USS Challenger NCC-12886 Lieutenant, j.g. 238402.01 - Present Lecturer in Interstellar Law 237705.29: Assigned to USS Prophecy as Science Officer 237708.13: Comes aboard USS Isannah (Details of the Prophecy mission classified: The Isannah was attempting to find/rescue the Prophecy, whose experimental drive system had malfunctioned, leading to a mutiny and a firefight between the two ships) 237710.09-237712.11: Assists in preparation of defense for the court martial of Captain Nsala of the USS Prophecy. (Court martial records classified) 237710.14: Transferred to USS Isannah as Chief Science Officer. 237710.14-237712.11: Acts as Isannah JAG Liasion during investigation of the Prophecy mission; investigation suddenly closed (Investigation details/records classified) 237806.19: Has two near-death experiences while leading an away team on Deladrel. Encounters a well-produced anthropological forgery that eventually leads to some ridicule in the science community for his initial belief in it. One member of his away time, William Pullman, is nearly killed. This, combined with his own close encounters with death, begin to worry him. 237806.20: Son, Michael Levin, is born 237806.23: Promoted to full Lieutenant 237810.16: Transported with other officers from Isannah to and from an advanced alien vessel of unknown origin, presumed to be another galaxy. (“Orange Room Incident” records never filed; presumed lost during crew transfer to Ranger-A) 237902.22: Reassigned to Ranger-A along with crew of the Isannah, assumes post as Chief Science Officer. Later suffers heart attack on the bridge, spends rest of tour in Sickbay after being placed on temporary medical leave. 237908.10: Released from SB118 Sickbay after routine tests; ordered to take six months leave for medical purposes. 238003.01-238302.11: Professor of Interstellar Law, Starfleet Academy 238302.11: Put on indeterminate leave following remarks to students and media. 238302.17: Officially charged with publicly slandering superior officers and insubordination; refuses to enter a plea, saying, “This trial is unjust; I will only lend it validity by acknowledging its authority.” 238302.28: Found guilty on all charges, officially removed from professorship, demoted to ensign, placed on indefinite leave within San Francisco area pending assignment. Information on Court Martial During interview about the announced publication of his book on the intertwining of the fields of law and science, 238302.10: LEVIN: Quite frankly, I’m quite surprised that this is being published, and not because it’s a bad book. REPORTER: What do you mean by that? LEVIN: Well, there’s a lot people – I don’t want to mention anyone specifically, but higher-ups – who don’t like it if you say anything that you don’t agree with, and try to keep you from saying it. REPORTER: Are you saying that there are parts of your book that will be controversial? LEVIN: No, not controversial, I don’t think, but critical, where it starts to discuss the political side of the law. The Federation and Starfleet do a lot of good, but they’re not perfect. If they don’t like you, you’d damn well better watch out. REPORTER: Do you mean to imply that there are certain members of the Starfleet hierarchy that use their positions to pursue personal vendettas? LEVIN: What I’m trying to say is – OK, before I was in the ‘Fleet, I worked here as an attorney, mostly doing court-martial defense. Now, this was during the infiltration scare leading up to the Dominion War, so everyone was stabbing everyone in the back. And I saw a lot of guilty men get convicted, but I also saw a lot of innocent men get convicted – and when you’ve defended both, you can tell which is which. And the innocent ones, the prosecution knew they were innocent, but they’d done something, or said something, or made an enemy of someone with power, and next thing you know, they’re sitting in a brig, charged with something they didn’t do, while the real criminals are sitting free. Remarks to students immediately before being placed on indefinite leave, 238302.11: “I’m being allowed to talk to you today in order to explain why I’m being placed on indefinite leave. They decided it would be best, perhaps because of the questioning attitude I hope to have instilled in each and every one of you, to have me explain to you that I had ‘publicly slandered my superior officers’ and was going to be placed on leave until they figured out what to do with me. But here’s the problem with that: if I slandered my superiors, which is what I’m accused of doing, it implies that I knowingly spoke falsehoods, that I knowingly lied. And I did no such thing. Every word that I uttered, so far as I am concerned, is the truth. I mentioned no names, I didn’t say, Admiral So-and-So is a liar and a cheat, because that wasn’t what I was saying. But they say I lied, which is the biggest lie of all, because anyone who understood the situations I referred to would know that I was, in fact, uttering words that every fiber in my body held to be true – the only slander here is that which is being committed unto me, by accusing me of that act, by punishing me for it before trial (and taking me from this class is a punishment, no matter how rowdy you may believe yourselves to be). So, class, I will leave you with this: My father used to ask me, “We have guards, but who guards the guards?” I pose the same question to you. I want an essay on the topic, from any angle, even if you say that the entire statement is ludicrous, no less than ten pages, by the end of the semester. Thank you. I’ll be going for a little while now, be nice to my substitute, but not too nice.” Retrieved from "https://wiki.starbase118.net/wiki/index.php?title=James_Levin&oldid=212457" Starfleet personnel	cc/2019-30/en_middle_0059.json.gz/line1873
__label__wiki	0.810774	0.810774	Shoplifters Tops 92nd Kinema Junpo Best 10 Written by Hayley ScanlonPosted on February 10, 2019 Leave a comment Prestigious Japanese cinema magazine Kinema Junpo has named its “best 10” movies released in 2018. This year’s list is tinged with sadness as it includes the final screen performances of two much loved Japanese actors – Koreeda stalwart Kirin Kiki and Ren Osugi who sadly passed away in February of last year. 1. Shoplifters (万引き家族) Hirokazu Koreeda’s Palme d’Or winner picks up another award in being officially named the best movie of 2018 by the prestigious Kinema Junpo magazine. This hard hitting tale of modern lives on the margin may have irritated all the right people, but it also arrived at a pertinent moment in coinciding with a very real series of societal failures leading to the deaths of at risk children and contributing to a much needed debate as to society’s responsibility towards its most vulnerable citizens. Shoplifters also marks one of the last performances from the late Kirin Kiki who is also the recipient of the first Kinema Junpo special award. Review. 2. The Chrysanthemum and the Guillotine (菊とギロチン) The first of two films making the top 10 directed by Takahisa Zeze, The Chrysanthemum and the Guillotine is a Taisho era tale of sumo and revolution in which a band of anarchists known as the Guillotine Society find themselves fascinated by an itinerant troupe of female sumo wrestlers shortly after the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923. 3. And Your Bird Can Sing (きみの鳥はうたえる) Sho Miyake adapts the novel by Yasushi Sato but shifts the setting from 1982 to the present day and from Tokyo to the author’s native Hakodate (the setting for a series of his novels recently adapted for the screen which includes The Light Shines Only There, Over the Fence, and Sketches of Kaitan City). Recipient of the best actor award Tasuku Emoto stars alongside Shota Sometani and Shizuka Ishibashi as a trio of slackers become embroiled in an awkward ménage à trois. 4. Asako I & II (寝ても覚めても) A conflicted young woman struggling to move on from lost love falls for a guy who looks just like her ex but can’t decide whether to embrace the fantasy of unresolved romance or the security of a steady relationship in Hamaguchi’s complex yet playful comedy drama adapted from the novel by Tomoka Shibasaki. Review. 5. The Blood of Wolves (孤狼の血) Kazuya Shirashi, winner of this year’s best director award, pays tribute to the world of Battles Without Honour in an ’80-style neo-noir in which a straight-laced rookie is partnered with a veteran rogue cop who leads him straight into the heart of darkness. Review. 6. Lying To Mom (鈴木家の嘘) Mrs. Suzuki attempts to save her reclusive son who has tried to hang himself but injures herself in the process. Unfortunately, her son didn’t make it but when Mrs. Suzuki wakes up in hospital she’s lost her memory of the traumatic incident which put her there. Her family not having the heart to tell her the truth, pretend that their son is alive and well and living in Argentina… 7. Killing (斬、) The latest from Shinya Tsukamoto and his first foray into the jidaigeki, Killing follows a young samurai who prefers not to raise his sword but is swept into the violence of the Bakumatsu era anyway. 8. My Friend “A” (友罪) A second entry for director Takahisa Zeze, My Friend “A” is a story of the legacy of guilt and (im)possibility of redemption as an embittered former journalist befriends a strange young man he believes may have been responsible for a brutal series of child killings 17 years previously. Review. 9. Every Day A Good Day (日日是好日) Starring the legendary Kirin Kiki in one of her final performances, Every Day a Good Day is inspired by the writings of Noriko Morishita and revolves around the serene elegance of the traditional tea ceremony. 10. Kyoukaishi (教誨師) Ren Osugi stars as a prison chaplain ministering to prisoners on death on row in what would be his final screen appearance before he sadly passed away in February 2018. Best Actress: Sakura Ando (Shoplifters) Best Actor: Tasuku Emoto (And Your Bird Can Sing, Dynamite Graffiti, Lovers on Borders) Best Supporting Actress: Hana Kino (Come On Irene) Best Supporting Actor: Tori Matsuzaka (The Blood of Wolves) Best Newcomer (female): Mai Kiryu (The Chrysanthemum and the Guillotine, Lying To Mom) Best Newcomer (male): Kanichiro (The Chrysanthemum and the Guillotine) Best Director: Takahisa Zeze (The Chrysanthemum and the Guillotine, My Friend “A”) Best Screenplay: Toranosuke Aizawa & Takahisa Zeze (The Chrysanthemum and the Guillotine) Reader’s Choice Award for Best Director (Japanese): Hirokazu Koreeda (Shoplifters) Reader’s Choice Award: Shiraku Tatekawa (Shiraku Tatekawa’s Cinema Tsurezuregusa) Special Award: Kirin Kiki Source: Kinema Junpo official website. Posted in JapanTagged 92nd Kinema Junpo Best 10, Japan, Kinema Junpo Best 10, Kinema Junpo Best 10 2018 Previous Entry Tonight, at the Movies (今夜、ロマンス劇場で, Hideki Takeuchi, 2018) Next Entry Three Stories of Love (恋人たち, Ryosuke Hashiguchi, 2015)	cc/2019-30/en_middle_0059.json.gz/line1877
__label__cc	0.523685	0.476315	How to write a simple html5 page Writing a life story about someone with ptsd Vocabulary used in ielts academic writing Business plan movie theater restaurants Air force ppc codes list Air force ppc codes list do you need a license to flip contracts characteristics of qualitative research designFamily office tax structure sole proprietorship companies in india computer jobs from home no experience un consultancy jobs the road not taken important questions hamlet study guide questions and answers free scroll template for word not assigned meaning in tamil. Many storefronts are vacant, and many of the remaining restaurants and businesses are moving. What if the restaurant is really busy — will we make our showtime? Still, Jacobson is optimistic and energized by the positive feedback he's received so far. Meals are served starting at Those included amending the project plan according to the Local Development Act, relocating overhead power lines and oil pipelines, and clearing up titles. Until recently, the company focused its efforts on purchasing the licensing for TV series and movies for its millions of subscribers. Two midsize auditoriums each contain 73 and 48 seats. The Sci-Fi Dine-In is modeled after a s drive-in theater. The Refining the Plan resource that comes with it is helpful, especially if this is your first crack at writing a business plan. The venue's eight auditoriums vary in capacity, from as small as 25 seats up to 89 seats in the two largest. Netflix responded by developing unique content such as "Orange Is the New Black" and "House of Cards," and has signed actors such as Adam Sandler to create content exclusively for the streaming service. Bad location, a marginal niche, having no specific user in mind, raising too much or too little money--all of these issues can be prevented or at least mitigated with good planning. These days, the shopping center is emptying out. Meals are served starting at Or is it the great, cushy seats that kick back to take in the full view? You will notice, however, that sometimes we include links to these products and services in the articles. Our team at Series Seating has extensive experience as a movie theater seating manufacturer and designer. The first key difference is the gradation. In the theater, for example, most of the food is handheld. Both restaurants play old film footage on a loop. The now vacant property was the site of the former Eagle Point Apartments and a gas station. However, movie theater companies recognize that the appeal of the theater for moviegoers has not been eliminated completely amid the rise of streaming sites. Both restaurants play old film footage on a loop. Business Plan Template and Guide Global financial services firm vFinance offers a basic, page business plan template to download from its website--one the company says has been downloaded more than a quarter of a million times. The park offers a lovely space for sitting, people-watching, playing games, relaxing, or enjoying a live performance. Plans show large new retail buildings on the east side of the property and more new storefronts on the west side lining up alongside the existing Publix. Get a free 10 week email series that will teach you how to start investing. To learn more about our theater offerings or to see show times, visit our Theater Page. Run your card once at the beginning of the show, and keep adding to your tab if you need more snacks, drinks or popcorn. Entertainment, such as festivals, concerts and other performances, will take place in Grand Park throughout the year. All dishes on both menus are made from scratch, including the pizza dough, sandwich buns and cheesecake. Food is besides the point". Stand-alone drinking establishments such as night clubs or bars would not be permitted. It includes a specially-designed water fountain, lush landscaping and lighting and places to sit and enjoy the view. As a movie theater seating manufacturer, we work with theaters all over the country as well, as in South America and Australia, to provide exceptional theater seating. Food is besides the point". Leatherbee said the city still has many details to iron out before the project begins. Journal of criminal justice pdf deep space nine music. Traditionally plated entrees and appetizers are served in the dining room, while the "dark menu" offers more casual, theater-friendly food for customers ordering from their seats. According to the redevelopment agreement, infrastructure improvements are expected to begin within the next six months and completed within a year.Nov 26, · Movie theater sound system cost uebert angel books free download pdf what does an msp do freight broker business binomial probability distribution calculator miranda v arizona dissenting opinion this number has not been assigned. Aug 16, · City Lights Theater, Hudson Oaks: Hours, Address, City Lights Theater Reviews: /5. United States ; Came for a movie. It didn't impress me too much. terrible business plan and cannot believe it is still open. The food is gross and the movie was Location: Cinema Dr, Hudson Oaks, TX. As part of the government’s Vision plan, Saudis are requiring the majority of movie theater jobs go to native-born citizens, a big change from industries like restaurants where up to Theater attendance swells during the weekends, just when the Loop's weekday pace starts to ebb, notes Barry Schain, movie theater consultant and a principal at Chicago-based brokerage Wabash. Nov 23, · The area is slowly gaining more businesses and restaurants so this is a great movie theater if you happen to be in the area. Or have a bar and allow you to bring their drinks into the movie? Seriously, this is one of the best movie experiences I've ever had, and I plan to come back very soon. Business Customer Service/ Yelp reviews. Find 19 listings related to Amc Dine In Theater in Dallas () on kitaharayukio-arioso.com See reviews, photos, directions, phone numbers and more for Amc Dine In Theater locations in Start your search by typing in the business name below. 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__label__wiki	0.547538	0.547538	Prescription for Progress: United Against Opioid Addiction Drug overdose is the leading cause of accidental death in this country. The numbers continue to climb as the opioid epidemic rages on. That's why NewsChannel 13 has joined with the Times Union, Albany Police, the district attorney, St. Peter's Addiction Recovery Centers, MVP Health Care, Albany City Schools, private businesses and Siena College to attack this problem. The goal is to save lives. This partnership is now going public. Over the coming weeks and months, we'll share details of the first statewide and local survey of opioid use, attitudes toward treatment, government action and police intervention. This effort is called "Prescription for Progress: United Against Opioid Addiction." "The opioid crisis has touched every corner of our community across this nation," explained George Hearst III, the Times Union publisher and CEO. You see it in the lives ravaged by opioid abuse - those struggling to kick the habit as they serve out jail terms. Methadone clinics open daily, helping people to break the chains of their addiction. We also endure the heartbreak of too many families mourning the loss of loved ones, victims of overdose. While parents who've lost loved ones battle with lawmakers to stiffen penalties for sellers of a deadly dose of heroin or other opioid, this battlefield is so wide-ranging, it needs committed community involvement to succeed. It has to, because the toll this epidemic is taking on our loved ones is staggering. "Nearly six in 10 adults surveyed have been touched by the opioid crisis," explained Hearst. That's why key players in the Capital Region have joined forces to find solutions. "If we can do all that together, I think we can accomplish the mission -- which is to get as much information out in front of as many people as possible, with as much power as possible to perhaps convince people to either get help if they're already in trouble, or to avoid this situation if they possibly can," noted Steve Baboulis, WNYT general manager. Because information is power, the Times Union and NewsChannel 13 are partnering in this mission to save lives. "We will provide the context, we'll provide the organization, we'll provide resources that are going to be necessary to fight this scourge," assured Hearst. In the weeks ahead, we'll share results of the first statewide and local survey into the impact the opioid crisis is having - government and law enforcement response, treatment availability and community attitudes. "As much money as has already been given to this, more is needed. We have to get to our children. We have to get to them younger. We have to get to them effectively. We have to reach them on different platforms of content and information," noted Baboulis. "It's not going to be a short-term fix. This is a long-term problem. We didn't get here overnight," explained Hearst. Rotterdam family using loved one's death to raise heroin danger awareness Nine people charged in heroin distribution bust in Schenectady and Bronx Billboards target growing opioid epidemic Cities sue drug makers over opioid epidemic Paul's Race in memory of man who died of heroin overdose Capital Region crusader in fight against heroin addiction dies Albany mom arrested after police say 13-month-old daughter ingested heroin Non-opioid drug Gabapentin becoming part of the heroin epidemic Another drug worrying authorities WNYT Staff Updated: April 13, 2018 04:23 PM Created: April 11, 2018 08:43 PM	cc/2019-30/en_middle_0059.json.gz/line1880
__label__cc	0.645608	0.354392	Women & Golf Magazine Love The Game, Live The Life Amateur News Fashion Archive Buying The Right Gear Equipment Archive Travel Archive Get Fit for Golf Boost Your Game Lifestyle Archive Faults And Fixes Instruction Archive Women & Golf Events Your Forum The Women & Golf Visitor Bra On or Bra Off? Dress Codes ARE Complicated Something in the golf world news that particularly caught our interest this month was the story of a Canadian woman who has filed a human rights complaint after being fired from her job at a golf club for refusing to wear a bra. As if the debate surrounding dress codes wasn't already complex enough, the story might have just given us a new perspective on the topic. By Charlotte Ibbetson An article I wrote a few weeks ago, ‘Do Golf Clubs Really Still Need a Dress Code?’, sparked a wide-spread debate amongst our readers, to say the least. Feedback on the matter ranged from mildly interested statements of “I don’t really mind”, to those who felt so strongly that we feared they’d turn up at the office with pitchforks and flaming torches for the mere mention of ditching the sacred code. Then, I spotted in the news a story about a Canadian woman who has filed a human rights complaint after being fired from her job at a golf club for refusing to wear a bra. With a plethora of comments from both men and women (my personal favourite was “Let them swing freely”!!), one thing that did keep coming up was the fact that this was just totally unacceptable at a golf club, suggesting that if it were anywhere else it would be a different subject altogether. Bra on or bra off, the story made me realise that the topic of what is acceptable to wear at a golf club and what is not is anything but black and white (or lacey). I do have to admit that, after playing golf last weekend, I feel that I myself have taken a slight change in direction on the issue of dress codes- not quite a U-turn but more of a zig-zag step backwards. Turning up at the first tee (wearing my regulation-length skort and collared polo), I was greeted by two men, both of whom had their shirts untucked (at one of the Middle East’s most prestigious golf clubs, I’d like to just add) and just looked generally scruffy. As the normal fairway chit chat progressed throughout our round, I mentioned that I had written something about dress codes recently, as I genuinely was interested in what they’d have to say. To my surprise, my statement was met with comments from them both that a dress code should absolutely be in place, and that golf wouldn’t be golf without it. I stared back in disbelief, trying not to make it too obvious when my mouth fell open. These men stood in front of me, with their shirts untucked and looking visibly dishevelled, preaching the importance of properly upholding a dress code. Clearly, they thought that wearing white socks and a collared shirt, they could merrily play their game safe in the knowledge that they had ticked those ancient dress code boxes. Well, they hadn’t. But yet they also weren’t really wearing anything that particularly disobeyed the rules. Which bought me to my latest revelation. Do I think that changing the dress code will help modernise golf and encourage more people into the game? Absolutely. But at the same time, I also think that golf is a sport that carries with it a rather charming tradition and heritage that should be respected, at the very least by turning up at the course looking smart. For me, I think the problem lies somewhere between respecting that tradition and working out a universal way for people to understand what smart really means. But for now, let the great debate continue. And as for the bra, well, the jury is still out on that one… Let us know what you think! Email your thoughts to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. Do Golf Clubs Really Still Need a Dress Code? Sign-up to receive our Women & Golf newsletter! About WAG Women & Golf magazine was established in 1991 and combines all the core news, features and tips you would expect from the leading women’s golf title. The magazine and its complementing website are informative, modern and fun. From beginners through to experienced players the aim is to help women golfers everywhere get the most out of the game they love. Never miss an issue and save over 30% on the cover price. Pay just £17 for 6 issues or £32 for 12 issues and receive a free gift. Copyright © 2019 Women & Golf Magazine. All Rights Reserved. Site by Vinehaus Media We are using cookies to give you the best experience on our site. Cookies are files stored in your browser and are used by most websites to help personalise your web experience. By continuing to use our website without changing the settings, you are agreeing to our use of cookies.	cc/2019-30/en_middle_0059.json.gz/line1883
__label__cc	0.504959	0.495041	Would it be dangerous for the average country to drop its army? The money a country spends in defense is usually really high. There are many countries in a world like ours where the army is hardly ever used. Could it be possible for a country that is surrounded by allies to drop its army and use the money for something else? Would their allies see this as an opportunity for invasion and find any excuse to attack? Would it automatically trigger a coup? politics military-defense diegowcdiegowc $\begingroup$ Which country do you mean by "ours"? The United States has consistently used its military in many places since at least the late 1920s. $\endgroup$ – Jasper Nov 17 '16 at 22:39 $\begingroup$ @Jasper They may mean doesn't use consistently (there are long periods between armed conflicts) $\endgroup$ – Zxyrra Nov 17 '16 at 22:40 $\begingroup$ en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_without_armed_forces Costa Rica being the most notable. $\endgroup$ – user25818 Nov 17 '16 at 22:54 $\begingroup$ I meant a world like ours $\endgroup$ – diegowc Nov 17 '16 at 23:27 $\begingroup$ Well, many - perhaps most - cars will eventually go to the scrap yard with airbags that have never been used, but people still want them, and are willing to pay the extra cost. $\endgroup$ – jamesqf Nov 18 '16 at 5:21 From Ally to Freeloader One immediate problem a country would have from dropping its army is that it is now a big fat freeloader. An army is expensive, so immediately the allies could ask - why should we be paying all the cost of defense and allow you to enjoy the benefits? The well-armed countries could move for trade sanctions, demand payment from the country to help pay the cost, or just generally insist on bigger benefits on all future deals and treaties to help cover the cost of defense. Humans also have a funny tendency to be willing to join others in punishing someone who has violated norms like reciprocity, people who want to take advantage. Psychologically it wouldn't take much for all the allies to join together to make the undefended country suffer - financially or otherwise - to "even the score". This has happened and is actually a part of NATO agreements, and there a number of Polandball comics like this: This doesn't necessarily mean revolution, but it could easily become more costly than actually having an army if your allies want to push the issue. Who's Going To Stop Us? There is an old saying, along the lines of "one honest gun keeps two in the holster", or more famously: "Speak softly and carry a big stick." One reason that countries don't use their army is precisely because they have one, or simply the deterrent effect. Also note that, while you mention a scenario with no outside threats (assuming alliances hold strong), note that armies are often used as an internal deterrent against revolution from within. If you don't have a military, then martial law isn't exactly an option, and this lack of opposition could make rebel forces quite dangerous (if you have any). Finally, note that history has long recorded that few countries have allies forever. England and France were allies in the world wars, for instance - yet there were many hundreds of years where they were bitter enemies. Alliances tend to last precisely as long as both countries involved find them useful, and no longer. $\begingroup$ Poland's expenditure on the military as a percentage of the GDP is about the same as UK and France; and considerably less in real terms. You shouldn't get all your information from webcomics. $\endgroup$ – kingledion Nov 17 '16 at 22:45 $\begingroup$ @kingledion If web comics were unreliable sources of information, I'm pretty sure I would have read a web comic about it. $\endgroup$ – BrianH Nov 17 '16 at 23:02 $\begingroup$ "Alliances tend to last precisely as long as both countries involved find them useful, and no longer." Or, as Bismark put it, "Great powers do not have permanent friends, only permanent interests." Or as de Gaulle stated, "Treaties are like roses and young girls: they last while they last." $\endgroup$ – WhatRoughBeast Nov 18 '16 at 1:09 $\begingroup$ Actually the Germans do have armed forces. I saw them standing guard at our base when I was stationed in Germany from 2000-03. $\endgroup$ – EvilSnack Nov 18 '16 at 3:04 $\begingroup$ @inappropriateCode Beware the dangers of extrapolating from two data points. (Since I get all my wisdom from webcomics) $\endgroup$ – kingledion Nov 18 '16 at 14:09 They say you never need a gun until the moment you do. The same can be said about armies. governments don't really need them in good times, but when it's people began to revolt or another country decides to invade then suddenly the country needs an army, but army take time to build and time to train that way most country through out history have found it safer to have an army already available in crises situation instead of try to train an entire new army from scratch. At the very least they will a small group of elite warriors at the read backed up by local militia army that can be formed to support them if need. Also something to consider sometimes disbanding an army can be more expensive then keeping one. If a large military of hundreds of thousands suddenly disbands then that s couple hundred thousand people that are suddenly unemployed. While some military jobs can build marketable skill that can be used out of the military. This is why are government put some much money in to paying for the education of ex vents, so that they can be reintegrate into society. Do this on gigantic scale could be very expensive. Bryan McClureBryan McClure $\begingroup$ What is to be gained from an invasion nowadays, given that modern mostly-worldwide conventions do not acknowledge annexing another sovereign country, or a government established in such a manner? $\endgroup$ – rackandboneman Jul 13 '18 at 20:51 $\begingroup$ @rackandboneman Your annexion may not be recognized, but it does not change the fact that you now control the annexed region. ISIL for example was widely not recognized as a legitimate state, but it did not prevent them from raising taxes from the land they controlled. $\endgroup$ – Kolaru Jul 14 '18 at 19:58 A country without a military has a large number of problems, as other answers already described. In many cases the outcome might be bad (or at least bad for those people or groups that are currently in power in that country) All kinds of threats from the outside can be countered with enough military. But there is also a different way: Don't be a target. Admittedly, in most cases that also means: don't have anything worth taking. Most of all no oil or such. So, if you have natural ressouces, you need to find a way to make sure you can keep at least enough of them to support your population. Still, that, too, can be handled without an army, especially if you remember that there is always a bigger fish. But then there are threats from the inside. An army can be used to impose martial law. This is alwasy some kind of "lender of last resort" in any country where the government managed to screw up so badly that large parts of the population can no longer be kept peaceful by just threatening them with laws. Such a government might either do the wise thing: remember what their job actually is, and improve the situation of the people. Or send the military to beat the hell out of protesters. So, what does that all mean: Unless you have nothing left to lose, you would need a really good government to be able to afford not having a military. BurkiBurki The answer will have to be "it depends". I'll speak of NATO since it's the most obvious example, assuming when you say "average country" you mean "average developed nation". The alliance requires members having a mutual investment in collective defence - if one party is attacked we all come to their defence, and we can't very well do that without a standing army. However, there are exceptions. Iceland hasn't had an army for yonks, and doesn't want to have one. Of course they aren't "average", but that term is pretty amorphous right now. Iceland however wanted in NATO. Problem is NATO requires one to have an army, the compromise was that Iceland would provide NATO with bases instead of troops. In the above link it details other military commitments Iceland provides, like radar bases it maintains. So it's possible to be armyless and still to contribute. It's worth noting that NATO recommends (requires?) a 2% of GDP defence spending, which is really not very much at all. Armies also have utility to help in a crisis like a natural disaster, so they're not completely useless in peace time. It would probably be possible for say, a country like Portugal or Britain or France to do away with their armies because they are not in immediate threat, surrounded by allies, and in a stable political situation. Their nearest rivals also simply don't have the logistical capability to invade and hold their territory. But a country like Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, or Poland, with direct land border with historic rivals who are becoming more aggressive in recent years (see Ukraine), needs a military. They also need allies because they are too small to survive on their own. And while it would be risky for Russia's western-focused neighbours to decommission their armies, it would be downright suicidal for others like Israel, Taiwan, South Korea, whose militaries protect them from very real threats. If South Korea gave up its arms today and kicked out their US allies, you can bet North Korea will unify the peninsula tomorrow (in fairness the opposite is also true, though a better outcome). Life outside of a military alliance however is riskier, and for example; countries in the Middle East usually spend a lot of money on defence (Saudi Arabia spends a whopping 13.7% of GDP on their military and America in comparison spends 3.3%), because they are surrounded by threats, both from neighbouring states and internal strife. Then again, perhaps a Latin American state could do away with its army and not have to worry too much, so long as they had a sufficient police and border force to handle any issues. Again, it depends on context. inappropriateCodeinappropriateCode $\begingroup$ Good answer, maybe it's worth noting that (save Liechtenstein [and for obvious reasons Vatican City]) all countries with "absolutely no military forces" are at least associates of the Non-Aligned Movement and/or members of the Group of 77. $\endgroup$ – Feyre Nov 18 '16 at 10:57 $\begingroup$ @Feyre good points, I wasn't even aware of the Group of 77! $\endgroup$ – inappropriateCode Nov 18 '16 at 10:59 $\begingroup$ Iceland may be a bad example. Because it had no army, Britain was able to invade and occupy it during WWII with only a few hundred soldiers. $\endgroup$ – Mike Scott Nov 18 '16 at 19:41 $\begingroup$ @MikeScott pre-NATO events, not what is being discussed in terms of their security protection under the NATO umbrella without a standing army. Point being; you can survive without an army if your neighbours are friendly or you're in a defence club. $\endgroup$ – inappropriateCode Nov 18 '16 at 20:59 $\begingroup$ NATO treaty requirements are for at least 2% defense spending, but out of the over 25 member nations only 5 have reached that target in over 20 years, leading to NATO readiness to have been seriously eroded to the point where most member nations have no military worth mentioning left (e.g. the Dutch army has no serviceable APCs and almost no serviceable helicopters and fighter jets, despite on paper having them (though far fewer than the treaty obligations)). $\endgroup$ – jwenting Jul 12 '18 at 4:48 Let's see what happened in Europe in 1940. While the Dutch, Danes, Belgians, and Luxembourg had some armed forces, they were woefully inadequate, underfunded, and very poorly equipped. Other countries (Germany in this case) who were on paper friendly to them saw this as a golden opportunity to do a bit of expansion of their territory, gain new workers for their industry, and new raw materials as well. And yes, these countries were not in any way hostile to Germany, non-agression agreements were in effect that had stood for something like 50 years in case of the Netherland, Denmark, and Germany. There was a lot of trade, exchange of arts and science, etc. etc. No reason to believe the same wouldn't happen in other places. jwentingjwenting Supplementary answer about a special case, an Island Nation Such a nation may not need much of an army to stay secure. What army it has, is to deal with internal security, and it might well go by a different name. What it needs is a good navy and air force, and (in the modern world) excellent shore to ship missile defences. It's then pretty much invasion-proof. If it maintains a policy of strict neutrality and provided it is not blocking any major sea route or global resource, it will be left alone. 15 miles of water kept the UK safe in WW2. (That was a close thing). 150 miles of water would have been 100 times safer, rather than 10. New Zealand is the closest real world example I can think of. (About 1000 miles of water? And Oz is another island nation). Switzerland, being land-locked, needs and maintains a good army, but it is very different to most other ciuntries' armies. Switzerland also follows the policy of neutrality, and geographically it is far easier to move armies around Switzerland rather than through. The Swiss army is trained for guerilla warfare in alpine terrain, should any other army ever invade. The alpine passes are death traps for any invader. nigel222nigel222 $\begingroup$ But New Zealand doesn't have "a good navy and air force"; it has two frigates and no war planes. $\endgroup$ – Mike Scott Nov 18 '16 at 19:44 $\begingroup$ @mike_Scott I meant NZ as geographic example. But perhaps it's remoteness means it's pretty safe even without good naval defences? $\endgroup$ – nigel222 Nov 18 '16 at 20:34 Costa Rica abolished its military in 1948. It seems to have worked out fairly well for them. Charles BurgeCharles Burge Most nations need a military to defend them from foreign militaries. But they also face a threat that their own military will take over the government in a coup and run the place for themselves. There have been around 296 coups and coup attempts since 1945, which I believe is considerably more than the number of foreign wars. Of course, you might lose more in a foreign war. 2% of GNP is nothing to sneeze at, either. If you can put an extra 2% into development each year, if you can grow your economy 2% faster, in 35 years your GNP will double compared to what it would be otherwise. But if you get a coup and a junta puts a lot of your resources into their offshore bank accounts, you might lose far more than 2%. It's a question of relative risks. And it depends a lot on your neighbors. Particularly if you have border disputes and reasons they can use as an excuse to attack, that's an issue. They can always make up reasons later. But a lot of the excuses they can make up, depend on you having a military. They can't argue you're a threat to them if you don't have one. The devil is in the details. J ThomasJ Thomas Attempting to not retread too much ground here, a simple side effect of disbanding one's army would be internal problems. Not even so much as a rebellion but the relative flexibility an army can provide. Engineering units can prove to be very useful economically as well as during disasters where a dam or bridge needs fixing, as well as a national guard/reserve can help during evacuations or searches for lost people. Amphibious assault ships have come to the aid of sinking civilian vessels, and a carrier i believe, to some extent, during hurricane Katrina. You also have the political value of joining the army and the nationalism, etc. RaznarokRaznarok Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged politics military-defense or ask your own question. Why would a country collapse if the capital was taken? What would be the outer space equivalent of a country? How to make another country pay for a wall to keep them out? Is a nation with a King that acts on the behalf of the true ruler more politically unstable? Could an empire like this survive? What would induce a country to actively guard an empty wasteland? Defensive options for a 500km gap with steam trains and fireball mages? Best strategy against anti-material monsters How can a wealthy and enlightened minority manage to create colonies on Mars and cheapen space mining in a world of mysticism? Defense against endless hordes	cc/2019-30/en_middle_0059.json.gz/line1888
__label__cc	0.738539	0.261461	Broadpeak Wins Three Awards at 2019 NAB Show, Champions Ultra-Low Latency With Multicast ABR Broadpeak®, a leading provider of content delivery network (CDN) and video streaming solutions for content providers and pay-TV operators worldwide, today announced that its ultra-low-latency multicast ABR and local video caching technologies won multiple awards at the 2019 NAB Show. The company’s nanoCDN™ multicast ABR solution with ultra-low latency and device synchronization for live streaming was presented with the 2019 NAB Show Product of the Year Award and IABM’s BaM Award in the Consume category. In addition, Broadpeak’s BroadCache Box was recognized by PRODU magazine in the IP delivery category. “Broadpeak’s nanoCDN is the only multicast ABR technology on the market today that combines multicast delivery with CMAF and chunked transfer encoding, allowing operators to send video chunks while they are being processed,” said Jacques Le Mancq, CEO at Broadpeak. “Winning these awards acknowledges our hard work, swift responsiveness to industry challenges, and pioneering role in bringing ultra-low-latency multicast ABR, as well as local video caching technology, to the market.” As the first provider of multicast ABR technology, Broadpeak has set the benchmark for scalable, live multiscreen video delivery. The company’s nanoCDN solution leverages multicast ABR technology to synchronize all devices receiving a live feed in the HLS or MPEG-DASH format. As a result, it eliminates the echo effects of several screens in the same location. It also significantly reduces end-to-end latency, bringing it down from 30 to 40 seconds to where it is with traditional digital TV. By solving these issues, the solution enables pay-TV operators to switch from IPTV technology to full ABR. In addition, PRODU recognized Broadpeak for its BroadCache Box solution. The solution, deployed by HBO Latin America, leverages local video caching technology to lower CDN costs for broadcasters and content providers. Using BroadCache Box, broadcasters can dramatically reduce CDN costs while boosting subscriber QoE by deploying local caches into the networks of telecom or cable operators. Since the content is streamed from a location closer to end users, latency and network congestion are reduced, resulting in higher video bit rates, faster start times, and uninterrupted viewing sessions. More information about Broadpeak solutions can be found at https://broadpeak.tv.	cc/2019-30/en_middle_0059.json.gz/line1894
__label__cc	0.686538	0.313462	Preserving WWII History Honoring Service 122nd Squadron 859th Squadron J O'flarity J P O'flarity served his country in World War II with the 15th SG . Information on J O'flarity is gathered and extracted from military records. We have many documents and copies of documents, including military award documents. It is from these documents that we have found this information on SSGT O'flarity. These serviceman's records are not complete and should not be construed as a complete record. We are always looking for more documented material on this and other servicemen. If you can help add to J O'flarity's military record please contact us. GO: 3462 On The Roster AM/2OLC SSGT GO: 628 Jackson MS The information on this page about J O'flarity has been obtained through a possible variety of sources incluging the serviceman themselves, family, copies of military records that are in possession of the Army Air Corps Library and Museum along with data obtained from other researchers and sources including AF Archives at Air Force Historical Research Agency and the U.S. National Archives. This information is by no means complete, we are adding information based upon documentation in our possession. If you have more information concerning the service of J O'flarity, including pictures, documents and other artifacts that we can add to this record, please Contact Us. 2641sg.org, Copyright 2019, Army Air Corps Library and Museum, Inc., All Rights Reserved	cc/2019-30/en_middle_0059.json.gz/line1895
__label__cc	0.688696	0.311304	» Heavy Chain Neutrophil Extravasation Last Updated on Thu, 04 Jul 2019 \| Heavy Chain As an inflammatory response develops, various cytokines and other inflammatory mediators act upon the local blood vessels, inducing increased expression of endothelial CAMs. The vascular endothelium is then said to be activated, or inflamed. Neutrophils are generally the first cell type to bind to inflamed endothelium and extravasate into the tissues. To accomplish this, neutrophils must recognize the inflamed endothelium and adhere strongly enough so that they are not swept away by the flowing blood. The bound neutrophils must then penetrate the endothelial layer and migrate into the underlying tissue. Monocytes and eosinophils extravasate by a similar process, but the steps have been best established for the neutrophil, so we focus on neutrophils here. The process of neutrophil extravasation can be divided into four sequential steps: (1) rolling, (2) activation by chemoat-tractant stimulus, (3) arrest and adhesion, and (4) transendothelial migration (Figure 15-3a). In the first step, neutrophils attach loosely to the endothelium by a low-affinity selectin-carbohydrate interaction. During an inflammatory response, cytokines and other mediators act upon the local endothe-lium, inducing expression of adhesion molecules of the selec-tin family. These E- and P-selectin molecules bind to mucin- like cell-adhesion molecules on the neutrophil membrane or with a sialylated lactosaminoglycan called sialyl Lewisx (Figure 15-3b). This interaction tethers the neutrophil briefly to the endothelial cell, but the shear force of the circulating blood soon detaches the neutrophil. Selectin molecules on another endothelial cell again tether the neutrophil; this process is repeated so that the neutrophil tumbles end-over-end along the endothelium, a type of binding called rolling. As the neutrophil rolls, it is activated by various chemoat-tractants; these are either permanent features of the endo-thelial cell surface or secreted locally by cells involved in the inflammatory response. Among the chemoattractants are members of a large family of chemoattractive cytokines called chemokines. Two chemokines involved in the activation process are interleukin 8 (IL-8) and macrophage inflammatory protein (MIP-1p). However, not all chemoattractants belong to the chemokine group. Other chemoattractants are platelet-activating factor (PAF), the complement split products C5a, C3a, and C5b67 and various N-formyl peptides produced by the breakdown of bacterial proteins during an infection. Binding of these chemoattractants to receptors on the neutrophil membrane triggers an activating signal mediated by G proteins associated with the receptor. This signal induces a conformational change in the integrin molecules in the neu- Arrest/ adhesion © Transendothelial migration © Endothelium Chemokine or chemoattractant receptor Ig-superfamily CAM FIGURE 15-3 (a) The four sequential but overlapping steps in neutrophil extravasation. (b) Cell-adhesion molecules and chemokines involved in the first three steps of neutrophil extravasation. Initial rolling is mediated by binding of E-selectin molecules on the vascular endothelium to sialylated carbohydrate moieties on mucin-like CAMs. A chemokine such as IL-8 then binds to a G-protein-linked receptor on the neutrophil, triggering an activating signal. This signal induces a conformational change in the integrin molecules, enabling them to adhere firmly to Ig-superfamily molecules on the endothelium. trophil membrane, increasing their affinity for the Ig-super-family adhesion molecules on the endothelium. Subsequent interaction between integrins and Ig-superfamily CAMs stabilizes adhesion of the neutrophil to the endothelial cell, enabling the cell to adhere firmly to the endothelial cell. Subsequently, the neutrophil migrates through the vessel wall into the tissues. The steps in transendothelial migration and how it is directed are still largely unknown; they may be mediated by further activation by chemoattractants and subsequent integrin-Ig-superfamily interactions or by a separate migration stimulus. Essentials of Human Physiology This ebook provides an introductory explanation of the workings of the human body, with an effort to draw connections between the body systems and explain their interdependencies. A framework for the book is homeostasis and how the body maintains balance within each system. This is intended as a first introduction to physiology for a college-level course. The Kidney Disease Solution Schematic Diagrams and Service Manuals Phagocytosis - Human Physiology Chemotherapy Extravasation Adhesion Molecule Interactions Play Critical Roles in Extravasation Helicobacter Pylori Structure Cellular Distribution of MHC Molecules What is the first cell that binds to inflammed endothelium? When do eosinophils extravasate? Zachary Stewart Which cells are the first to bind inflamed tissue? What is neutophill extra vasation? Chain Infection	cc/2019-30/en_middle_0059.json.gz/line1901
__label__wiki	0.516896	0.516896	7thSea← Forums← The Miscellaneous Tavern← General discussion← Not-Mary-Stuart Nathan Henderson Not-Mary-Stuart I realized something the politics of Avalon seemed to be missing - a claimant for the Vaticine to support as the rightful heir to the throne. I was thinking this character could by the lynchpin of an exploration of dynastic marriage politics (at the moment that's the main thing I've thought out, I've left her personality undefined as I thought a player might be interested in actually taking on the role themselves and fleshing her out if they wanted to deal with all the baggage her situation brings). So Richard IV (the setting's Not-Henry-VIII, father to Margharet and Elaine) had a sister, who wed a Montaigne nobleman before Richard's falling out with the Church. They had a son. During Margharet's Vaticine reign, as it became clearer that she wasn't going to bare children, that man was increasingly looked to as her likely successor. He had a daughter. Against the backdrop of the War of the Cross, to secure Vaticine unity (being undermined by King Leon's own support for the Objectionists in Eisen to weaken Imperator Reifenstahl), this heir to the throne of Avalon makes a marriage pact with the king of Castille, engaging our Not-Mary-Stuart to the future Good King Sandoval. This doesn't go over well in the court of the Sun King, and our male heir ends up predecessing Iron Margharet. Not-Mary-Stuart is taken quickly into the royal household of Montaigne for her protection (much to the frustration of Margharet and the King of Castille). A wrench is throne into all Vaticine succession plans when Margharet dies, and Elaine reappears after being thought dead for years, in possession of the Graal. Of course the Vaticine faithful don't consider Elaine legitimate, but the uniting symbol and power of the Graal made it impossible at the time to stop her from taking the throne. 10 years later, and Not-Mary-Stuart is a teenager reaching her majority. Rumors circulate the Sun Court that if Morella Giancinni does not bare a son soon, she will be cast aside and l'Empereur (as Leon has since proclaimed himself) will wed Not-Mary-Stuart himself, crown her the true Vaticine Queen of Avalon making him King-Consort (a move that would effectively be an act of war against Elaine, who Leon is still smarting rebuffed all his overtures for marriage). Meanwhile Castille considers the original marriage contract engaging Not-Mary-Stuart to Good King Sandoval to be still binding (he's a few years younger than her, but way closer than Leon). In Avalon, Elaine has a soft spot for the girl - she herself was engaged against her will and effectively a prisoner to secure her half-sister's rule before she fled to Bryn Brasil. But she also has no illusions about the threat a Vaticine claimant on her throne poses as long as she draws breath. Some members of her court think killing the girl would be the most humane move to avoid a war. Others - with awareness of Elaine's own lack of heirs - think that "rescuing" her to engage to a Graal-loyalist and hopefully produce heirs who can be raised in the Church of Avalon is the best move (James McDuff's name has been floated for this end, potentially uniting the thrones of Avalon and the Highlands completely).	cc/2019-30/en_middle_0059.json.gz/line1902
__label__cc	0.529058	0.470942	Port of Portland, OR's Passenger Facility Charge Bonds Upgraded To 'A+' From 'A' On Criteria Application NEW YORK (S&P Global Ratings) May 16, 2019--S&P Global Ratings raised long-term and underlying ratings on Port of Portland, Ore.'s passenger facility charge (PFC) revenue bonds to 'A+' from 'A'. The outlook is stable. The upgrade reflects the application of our "U.S. And Canadian Not-For-Profit Transportation Infrastructure Enterprises" (TIE) criteria (published March 12, 2018). Securing the bonds is a $4.50 fee levied on enplaned passengers at Portland International Airport (PDX), which the port owns and operates. "The ratings reflect our opinion of PDX's very strong enterprise risk profile and the strong financial risk profile associated with the stand-alone PFC pledge," said S&P Global Ratings credit analyst Joe Pezzimenti. In general, our enterprise risk profile assessment incorporates the favorable characteristics of an expanding metropolitan area and limited competition from other airports, and the resulting fundamental passenger demand for PDX. Our financial risk profile assessment considers the port's strong historical and projected maximum annual debt service (MADS) coverage of the PFC obligations, offset by a narrow fixed-rate revenue pledge. The financial risk profile assessment also reflects our expectation of declining PFC debt levels due to no planned additional parity debt and drawing down the PFC fund balance to fund projects included in the port's capital improvement program (CIP) for PDX. PDX is on 3,200 acres on the southern edge of the Columbia River, 12 miles northeast of downtown Portland. The FAA considers PDX a large-hub airport, ranking 30th busiest airport in the U.S., based on 2017 enplaned passenger data from the FAA. Seattle-Tacoma International Airport is the closest major airport facility (160 miles to the north) and does not, in our opinion, provide a viable alternative. The only other commercial service airports in the state are smaller and at least 100 miles from Portland. The stable outlook reflects our expectation that pro forma PFC MADS coverage will remain strong during the two-year outlook period from generally steady enplanement levels and no additional parity debt plans. We could raise the rating in the next two years if pro forma PFC MADS coverage based on actual results exceeds 3x and we believe it will stay above this level. Although unlikely, we could lower the rating if pro forma PFC MADS coverage erodes significantly due to a severe decline in enplanements or the port issuing significant parity debt.	cc/2019-30/en_middle_0059.json.gz/line1903
__label__wiki	0.684197	0.684197	Biopesticides Seeds and Traits Sourcing Network Trade Summit Biocontrols Conference Vision Conference Biostimulant CommerceCon Subscribe to the NEW AgriBusiness Global magazine Digital Edition! A Salute to Retired CropLife America President Jay Vroom By Charlotte Sine\|15 November 2018 Jay Vroom holds two of the many covers of Farm Chemicals magazine, CropLife’s legacy brand until 2001, that featured CropLife America chairpersons during his three decades of service. Editor’s note: It goes without saying that crop protection manufacturing is a central point of interest to readers of this publication. So it makes perfect sense that CropLife® magazine (sister publication to AgriBusiness Global) and CropLife America, the organization that represents crop protection manufacturers, have enjoyed a strong decades-long relationship. (As an aside, while we share the name, we are not affiliated in any way.) Dating back to the 1950s, when it was called the National Agricultural Chemical Association, the incoming chairpersons were featured on the cover annually. And for more than 40 years, the editorial lynch pin in this relationship was Charlotte Sine. Char provided an important and influential voice to the distribution channel as well as crop protection manufacturing. She observed, reported, and editorialized on everything from Silent Spring to the formation of the EPA to the Food Quality Protection Act, providing reasoned and rational perspective. And she knew everyone. There have only been four presidents of CropLife America over the years, and Char knew all of them personally, including Jay Vroom. We asked her to tell the story of Jay’s tenure at the organization, mixed in with some personal anecdotes and experiences. We, like Char, appreciate Jay’s contributions and wish him all the best in his future endeavors. If you’re looking for a key to Jay Vroom’s decision to step down as president of CropLife America after 30 years, this might be it. Asked what he likes to do in his free time, he answers, “What free time?” Jay has given 110% from Day One. Make that 150%. He’s always done that, it’s just part of his makeup. He’s not flamboyant, he’s not a glad-hander, nor one to grab all the credit when victories are achieved — or try to avoid blame when failures happen. Most of all, he’s a great communicator and a guy with a knack at getting people with diverse, often conflicting interests to work together. It’s a lesson he learned in his youth as a member of 4H and later FFA. Jay grew up on a diversified crop and livestock farm in Illinois. He was active on the farm, involved and interested in agriculture. “When I was transitioning from 7th to 8th grade,” he says, “my vo-ag teacher came to visit me and my parents and laid out a plan for my next four years, with an emphasis on being active in FFA and then heading off to University of Illinois with a major related to ag. ‘Do that, and life will be great,’ he said. I’m an unabashed supporter of FFA. In fact, I will be heading their Industry Giving Council for the next two years. FFA showed me what collaboration can accomplish.” Following graduation with a degree in ag communications, Jay joined the staff of the National Plant Food Institute (now The Fertilizer Institute [TFI]) working with Don Collins, Vice President for Communications. “Don was one of the very best professional communication leaders in ag, a particularly good writer,” Jay notes. “I honestly didn’t have much interest in writing, but he convinced me writing was as important as verbal communication. It’s been an unbelievable asset these 30 years.” After several years, Jay left to become Chief Executive of the Merchants Exchange in St. Louis, then six years later was named head of National Fertilizer Solutions Association (now Agricultural Retailers Association [ARA]). In 1989 he was approached by Keith Boyer of Brayton Chemical to join the National Agricultural Chemicals Association, CropLife America’s original name, as Vice President of Communications, becoming President when Dr. Jack Early retired. “He convinced the board I was the right choice. So, ‘Thank you, Keith.’ You’re responsible for these last 30 years,” Jay says with a smile. Jay took command of a streamlined operation in 1989, following a reorganization that created Oversight Committees on Public Affairs, Science and Regulatory, and Legislative and which sunset all but four of 39 standing committees (Law, Washington Representatives, State Affairs, and International.) “We were clearing the decks of a somewhat convoluted committee structure to be able to react more quickly and efficiently,” he says. Another important step — reaching an accord with TFI to work together on projects to support retail dealers and their state and regional associations with the primary focus on legislative and regulatory issues. Read the full story on CropLife.com. Sine is editor-at-large at Meister Media Worldwide, parent company to CropLife and CropLife IRON magazines. See all author stories here. ADAMA Sales to Be Hit by Delayed Planting, Tight Crop Protection Supply EPA Issues Long-Term Registration for Sulfoxaflor Austria Votes to Ban Glyphosate Sponsor: CTL The Keys to The Central American Tolling Industry: A Market Leader’s Experience ADAMA expects first-half sales to decline, as continued tight... In a win for U.S. growers, the U.S. Environmental... Top 30 Agrichemical Exporters in China Even with the recent crackdown on manufacturers, China continues... Precision Application and Crop Protection: What’s Your View? The use of precision application has seen huge growth... Meister Media Worldwide Meister Interactive © 2019 Meister Media Worldwide	cc/2019-30/en_middle_0059.json.gz/line1908
__label__wiki	0.673779	0.673779	2016 NRA Bianchi Cup Championship Highlights by John Parker, Managing Editor, Shooting Sports USA - Wednesday, October 26, 2016 Doug Koenig shoots the Barricade Event during the Colt Championship Final. Doug Koenig notched a record-setting 17th NRA Bianchi Cup Action Pistol Championship, May 24-28, winning High Overall and High Open at the 2016 event presented by MidwayUSA, in Columbia, Mo. Koenig won his first Bianchi Cup in 1990, and he was the first to finish with a perfect score. Since then, he has achieved a perfect score in all but one match. Koenig defeated 205 other competitors across multiple divisions, securing a perfect score. Koenig fired a Smith & Wesson Performance Center DK 38 Super 1911, and he was using his Safariland 014 holster and customized ELS belt. “For me, this match is all about the pressure and nerves. Any time you can get through something like that, it’s a great feeling,” said Koenig. “I’ve shot many types of shooting disciplines, but those kinds of things always seem to come up for me here because it is Bianchi.” Many consider the Bianchi Cup to be the ultimate test for both a shooter’s skills and his or her equipment. Each competitor must complete four events, running strings of fire at varying distances for each of those scenarios. The Practical Event emphasizes accurate shooting, including weak-hand only, from distances ranging from 10 to 50 yards. The Barricade Event has shooters placing shots on target at distances ranging from 10 to 35 yds. The Moving Target stage requires competitors to hit targets sliding across a 60-ft. track, again at varying distances. The final stage is the Falling Plate scenario in which shooters engage stationary plate racks, in order, from 10, 15, 20 and 25 yds. After completing the match’s 1920-point aggregate, the top 36 competitors shot the same course of fire again for Saturday’s Colt Championship Final. Scores from the match and Colt Final were combined to determine the champions. Metallic Championship Sergeant First Class Patrick Franks of the U.S. Army Marksmanship Unit (AMU) won his second consecutive Bianchi Cup Metallic title this year. Franks also won the NRA National Pistol Championship at Camp Perry last year. Robert Vadasz of the U.S. Border Patrol pistol team placed second in Metallic. Regarding successfully defending his Metallic win last year, Franks said, “I really wanted to come back here and have a repeat of what I did last year, our first year. It was very rewarding, knowing I had to fall back on my previous training and the mentality of being able to walk up to the line and be able to focus on the task at hand and not try to overthink it, but just do what we know how to do best.” Production Championship This year, each position on the Bianchi Cup Production Division podium was occupied by a competitor using a Springfield Armory pistol. Sergeant First Class Patrick Adam Sokolowski of the AMU won the Production Championship shooting his XD(M) 5.25" Competition Series in 9 mm Luger. Another AMU shooter, SFC Michael Gasser, and Springfield Armory’s own Rob Leatham—a former champ himself—claimed second and third, respectively. About his win, Sokolowski said, “It definitely feels awesome to win.” He added, “Last year, I was shooting well and then missed two plates and that cost me the championship. This year, I missed one plate at the last yard line, and I was pretty upset, but in the end I shot better than last year.” After Sokolowski officially won the Production Championship, Leatham commented, “Losing is never fun, but I honestly couldn’t think of two people I would rather have beat me—I’m proud to call Adam and Michael friends. Congratulations guys, and thanks for showing the world how awesome and accurate the XD(M) shoots!” Women’s Championship Tiffany Piper of New Zealand won her first Bianchi Cup Women’s Championship this year saying, “I have been competing in the Bianchi Cup for nearly 10 years, and I have always dreamed of this day when I would win the Women’s Division. Congratulations to all of the other women for a great event and all of the other top winners. You all rock!” When asked about the gear she used at Bianchi she said, “I barely ever change anything I use; I like the old saying ‘if it’s not broke don’t fix it.’ Most of this gear I have been shooting with for 10 years now. I use a Springfield 1911 chambered in .38 Super with a Leupold Gilmore Scope. For ammunition, I use Atlanta Arms and Ammo’s .38 Super 115-gr. minor load. My belt is a Safariland ELS and my holster is a Bianchi Hemisphere, also by Safariland.” Piper has been competing at the Bianchi Cup since she was 13. When asked if any memories stand out, she replied, “It is the friends I have made that I consider extended family. They have watched me grow up both physically and within the shooting sports, which I think is something pretty unique coming all the way from New Zealand.” She added that she really appreciates “the generosity and kindness other shooters have shown me.” Looking For More On NRA Competitive Shooting? For more than 50 years, Shooting Sports USA has provided competitive shooters with how-to articles, firearm reviews, match schedules for 11,000 tournaments each year and expert advice from the pros. With a growing library of online back issues, three years of Shooting Sports USA is now only a click away. Signup for your free monthly subscription at shootingsportsusa.com. Also, for detailed day-by-day accounts of the action at Bianchi Cup, Camp Perry and other NRA events, go to nrablog.com. For more on NRA Competitive Shooting, go to nrahq.org/compete. Bianchi Cup Championship Doug Koenig Smith & Wesson Performance Center M1911 Sergeant First Class Patrick Franks Tiffany Piper John Parker SHOT Show 2019: Ruger Custom Shop Doug Koenig 1911 Second Acts: Champion Shooter Vera Koo Doug Koenig to Lead Newly Launched Team Ruger Results: 2017 NRA National Matches	cc/2019-30/en_middle_0059.json.gz/line1910
__label__wiki	0.583364	0.583364	Sweet tooth leads police to home burglary suspects Dec 7th 2016 3:55PM GUTHRIE, Okla. (KFOR) - A good detective looks for any piece of evidence to solve a crime. As it turns out, home burglars left Guthrie police a treasure trove. "I'd have to say this is the first time candy wrappers have been significant in solving any type of crime that I know of," said Sgt. Anthony Gibbs. It all began in a historic neighborhood in east Guthrie, when the victims left their home for the weekend. Trail of candy wrappers lead police to burglary suspects Photo: KFOR When they returned, their home had been ransacked. "They stole a gun safe from upstairs, very heavy, dragging down the hall, hitting the walls and causing damage inside the house," Gibbs said. Police said the alleged intruders took the loaded gun safe to the alley behind the home and emptied it. They also took family heirlooms valued at $13,500. "Antique watches, personal documents. It was really traumatic to the family to have those things stolen from them. There was a rosary that was also stolen, which had some significance," Gibbs said. But, police didn't have to look long or hard for the suspects. In the alley way behind the house, they found drag marks from that gun safe. They also discovered a trail of candy wrappers reminiscent of Hansel and Gretel. In all, they found eight blocks of Kit Kat and Reese's wrappers. "The wrapper trail continued after they dropped the safe, in fact, all the way back to their house. Police got a search warrant and recovered most of the stolen property," Gibbs said. Police said it's an example of "sweet justice." Detectives will turn over all the evidence to the district attorney, who will determine if there is enough to issue arrest warrants. Bridezilla gets shut down after revealing she did not want the …	cc/2019-30/en_middle_0059.json.gz/line1920
__label__wiki	0.757332	0.757332	Timeline: Myanmar protests A look at the escalating protests sparked by fuel price rises in Myanmar. The protests are the biggest the country has seen in two decades [Reuters] August 15 – Myanmar government imposes 100 per cent increase in fuel prices at state-owned petrol stations. The price of canisters of compressed natural gas also soars, rising by five times. No warning is given, nor any reason for the price rise. The price hike immediately causes transport costs to skyrocket, driving up prices for food and other essentials and adding to hardships faced by millions of Myanmar's poor. August 19 – Pro-democracy activists lead a rare public protest against price rises through the streets of the former capital, Yangon. Witnesses say up to 500 join the march. The demonstration is led by activists of the 88 Generation Students group. The group is made up of former student leaders from the 1988 pro-democracy uprising, many of whom were jailed and tortured after the military crushed those protests. Dozens of protesters have been beaten and arrested August 21 – State-run New Light of Myanmar newspaper reports arrest of 13 leaders of the fuel price protests for "undermining stability and security of the nation". Among those arrested is Min Ko Naing, one of Myanmar's most prominent activists and a member of the 88 Generation who spent 16 years in prison for his involvement in the 1988 uprising. August 22 – Up to 300 protesters join a second protest march through Yangon. The march is broken up by members of the pro-government Union Solidarity and Development Association (USDA), backed up by police. Witnesses say many USDA members disguised themselves as street sweepers before attacking the protesters, beating them with sticks. Pro-democracy groups report arrests of several more activists August 23 – Police and government supporters break up a third, much smaller, protest in Yangon. More activists are taken away while journalists covering the protest report being roughed up by police and warned not to take pictures. Exiled Myanmar pro-democracy groups based in Thailand cite sources reporting other fuel protests held in other cities in Myanmar. Myanmar's military rulers rarely tolerate public protests [AFP] August 24 – Amid continued tensions, reports emerge of government moves to tighten security, deploying more troops to Yangon and other key areas across the country. Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary general, urges Myanmar government to "exercise maximum restraint" in its response to protests. August 25 - State run media accuses members of the 88 Generation Students of terrorism and having contacts with exiled groups. It warns protest leaders could be charged with "harming the stability of the state" and could face up to 20 years in jail. August 26 - Witnesses say leading democracy activist Htin Kyaw is beaten and arrested by plain clothes government supporters or agents following small protest in central Yangon. August 27 - Fuel price protests reported in the northern towns of Bago and Mogok, shadowed by plain clothes police and members of the USDA. August 28 - Police and USDA members break up pro-democracy protest in Yangon, arresting dozens. On the same day Buddhist monks join a protest against fuel price increases in the northwestern city of Sittwe. August 30 - Group of detained pro-democracy protesters launch hunger strike, reportedly demanding medical treatment for a protester whose leg was broken by USDA members. Monks have been carrying their alms bowls upside down as a symbol of protest [Reuters] September 3 - Protesters begin 160 km march from town of Labutta to Yangon. Several marchers are arrested as police move in to beak up the demonstration before it reaches the former capital. September 5 - Police and soldiers fire warning shots to break up protest by Buddhist monks in the northern town of Pakokku. Several monks are reportedly injured. The incident is the first reported case of guns being used to break up demonstrations since the current round of protests began. September 6 - A group of about 20 government officials are briefly held hostage by monks in Pakokku demanding apology after guns were fired during protests a day earlier. September 9 - Government accuses opposition National League for Democracy (NLD) of using fuel price rises to instigate nationwide riots and unrest. It warns that the protest could lead to the outlawing of the NLD. September 18 - Buddhist monks hold string of protests in Yangon and other cities on anniversary of 1988 coup that brought current military regime to power. The monks say they will begin boycotting alms from members of the military government and their associates. One protest in the northern city of Sittwe is broken up by police using tear gas and firing warning shots. September 21 - Ibrahim Gambari, the UN's special envoy on Myanmar, raises "serious concerns" over the growing political crisis, telling the Security Council recent developments "underscore the urgency to step up our efforts to find solutions to the challenges facing the country". Aung San Suu Kyi was in tears as she greeted the monks [Reuters] September 22 - Aung San Suu Kyi greets protesting monks from the house where she has been detained for 12 of the past 18 years after army allows about 2,000 people to pass a roadblock and gather by the democracy leader's home. Nuns join monks in protest for the first time. September 24 - Monks call on sympathisers to join their marches as between 50,000 and 100,000 protesters take to Yangon's streets. September 25 - Thousands of monks and supporters again gather in defiance of government threats of a military crackdown. Government imposes dusk-to-dawn curfew in Yangon and second biggest city of Mandalay. Internet access is reportedly blocked. September 26 - Soldiers and riot police deployed around at least six big monasteries in Yangon. September 27 - At least nine people are killed, including a Japanese video journalist, after security forces use automatic weapons on protesters in Yangon. Tens of thousands of people join protests that continue throughout the day.	cc/2019-30/en_middle_0059.json.gz/line1928
__label__cc	0.509483	0.490517	Partinform Mobility Beat Digital Rate Card Jul 16, 2019 Mobilty Beat TransUnion Joins Forces with FirstCheck to Launch SA’s First Consumer-Focused Vehicle… Car buyers can spot any hidden faults in their next purchase with a full-pedigree check Buying a car may not only cause distress, but it can also hurt a consumer’s pocketbook when the right checks aren’t completed. To this end, TransUnion and… more Jul 16, 2019 Motoring Audi's Q-model retail campaign recognized with an APEX Award Audi's non-traditional approach to brand building has been awarded with an advertising effectiveness award, this time in the retail space The Q-model retail campaign featuring Nomzamo Mbatha offered stand out value for the premium automotive… more Jul 16, 2019 Buzz ETC must bepart ofsolving e-tolls Following Transport Minister Fikile Mbalula’s announcement during his portfolio budget vote debate,Electronic Toll Collection (ETC) company would like, together with SANRAL, to engage with the government appointed task team to make… more Is your diesel vehicle under-performing or refusing to start during the winter? Owners of diesel-powered vehicles may notice an issue starting their cars or experience under-performance during a cold snap, especially where temperatures drop below -7°C for several hours. 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The criteria for Jury eligibility includes: All candidates must be members in good… more Petrol up, diesel down, as oil, Rand do battle While the Rand has won ground against the US dollar in July, international oil prices have increased, offsetting the Rand's gains. This is according to the Automobile Association (AA), which was commenting on unaudited monthly fuel price data… more SA's hardest working bakkies now also working for a cause When Isuzu Motors South Africa says there's work to do, they mean it. The company handed over three Isuzu D-MAX bakkies to the humanitarian organisation, Gift of the Givers. Known as South Africa's hardest working bakkies, the vehicles set off… more Axalta Opens New State-of-the-Art Refinish Customer Training Center in Midrand Company Further Commits to South African Refinish Market Following Opening of New Refinish Facility at Same Location Axalta, a leading global supplier of liquid and powder coatings, on 12 July 2019, announced the official opening of a new,… more Quality of workshops under scrutiny “There is no longer a divide between what a dealership can offer you and what an independent workshop can,” says Dewald Ranft, Chairman of the Motor Industry Workshop Association (MIWA). He says the scales are balancing and consumers are… more Alfa Romeo Tonale concept wins Auto Express' Readers' Choice Award Tonale wins Readers' Choice Design Award 2019 The Tonale was revealed to the public at the Geneva motor show in March and made its UK debut at last week's Goodwood Festival of Speed The Alfa Romeo Tonale concept has been honoured with the… more South Africa's most popular SUVs The global popularity of sports utility vehicles (SUVs) has been well documented; they’ve become the darlings of automotive buyers. Last year, a whopping 29.77 million SUVs were sold, 6.8% up on 2017, placing this vehicle category in the number… more Jul 15, 2019 Motorsport National cross country competitors to triumph on the banks of the Vaal river at the SACCS… After five tough events and more than 2 800 kilometres of gruelling cross country racing in South Africa and Botswana, the final round of the 2019 South African National Cross Country Series, (SACCS) will take competitors, crews and supporters… more Imperial Logistics helps bring eye care to the people of Nigeria Imperial Logistics Limited, through its Worldwide Healthcare business in Nigeria and in partnership with the esteemed Tulsi Chanrai Foundation, is honoured to be contributing to the establishment of world-class eye hospital in Abuja. The… more Isuzu Supports Drought Relief in Makhanda ISUZU Motors South Africa this week delivered two water tank trucks to the disaster relief organisation, Gift of the Givers, to help with the water crisis in Makhanda (Grahamstown). Gift of the Givers Director of Strategic Planning Badr Kazi… more Volkswagen opens three Literacy Centres to benefit KwaNobuhle learners Literacy Centres opened at James Ntungwana, Vuba and Noninzi Luzipho Primary schools in KwaNobuhle Volkswagen operates five Literacy Centres to improve literacy among learners under the age of 10 Reaffirming its commitment to eradicating… more African show for General Aviation sector off to a flying start at Wonderboom National… The launch of the inaugural African Show for General Aviation, AERO South Africa, welcomed over 4200 visitors to Wonderboom National Airport last weekend. The 3-day event was presented by Messe Frankfurt South Africa in partnership with Messe… more DENSO and Toyota Agree to Establish a Joint Venture for Research and Advanced Development… Accelerating R&D to create future mobility DENSO Corporation and Toyota Motor Corporation today agreed to establish a joint venture* for research and advanced development of next-generation, in-vehicle semiconductors. The two companies will… more Three myths busted when it comes to saving on your short-term insurance As July is National Savings Month, it’s a time to reflect on your budget looking at where you are spending and where you could save more. Thinking you can cut costs on your insurance, however, is a potentially common misconception. “If you… more Thomsons Towing built on the back of Tata Trucks Thomson's Towing and Panelbeaters, based in White River, Mpumalanga, owes much of its success to the hardworking Tata trucks in its growing fleet. An Automobile Association partner, the company currently operates six Tata trucks comprising Tata… more It's time to take a new look at OPEL! Opel's Grandland X just got Grander with an Increased Warranty & Additional Specifications! Now all new Grandland X models come with an exceptional 5 Years / 150 000 km Warranty as standard, giving you true peace-of-mind motoring - from Opel!… more The T-Cross - Volkswagen's most connected car Volkswagen's connectivity solution will debut with the launch of the new T-Cross later this year VW Connect dataplug offers Volkswagen customers an easy retrofit car connectivity solution Pre-sales of the T-Cross open from 15 July Volkswagen's… more SA must grow next generation of data, AI scientists South Africa must grow the next generation of data and AI scientists in the transport sector and rewrite the rule book for future mobility. This is according to Mr Victor Radebe, founder of the not-for-profit Mobility Centre for Africa (MCA)… more To celebrate the victory of the first GP in the history of F1, which ran at Silverstone on May 13th, 1950, Alfa Romeo brings on the English racetrack the GP Tipo 159 "Alfetta", the evolution of the 158 that Nino Farina drove to win the first… more KBK light crane systems – flexible and affordable Super light, highly flexible and affordable, Demag’s KBK Light Crane Systems are easily adaptable to customers’ individual lifting requirements. Launched 50 years ago, they have been perfected over time and with their modular system can be… more The real cost of car theft and accidents - It pays to mitigate your risk While insurance is an essential aspect of recovering financially from a vehicle theft or accident, there are still unexpected costs you may not have planned for, and some which you cannot attach a monetary value to. “The best advice is to… more Ethical business in the motor sector – it’s a two-way street, says RMI “Doing the right thing even when no one is watching. This is the crux of what the Retail Motor Industry Organisation (RMI) believes ethical business best practice should be based on,” says Jan Schoeman, Chief Operations Officer, RMI. He adds,… more R2 Million product training programme for 300 Mdantsane (East London) auto mechanics… Automotive sector enterprise development company Filpro today kicked off a R2 million support programme aimed at growing the competitiveness of 137 informal automotive mechanics in Mdantsane outside East London. In total 300 people including… more The 100% street legal Mopar configuration enhances Wrangler's capability One of the major features at Camp Jeep will be the new Jeep Wrangler 1941 designed by Mopar. On display in the dedicated Mopar area, there will be two vehicles featuring this 100% street legal configuration - a 4-door Sahara with Ocean Blue… more Inside the All-new Audi Q8: bringing technology to life The brand-new Audi Q8, which recently arrived on South African shores, exemplifies progress and industry-leading innovation in a thrilling package, combining the elegance of a four-door luxury coupé with the versatile convenience of a large… more Giving back feels good "Be the change that you wish to see in the world." Mahatma Gandhi. These words rang true when Haval Motor Southern Africa commenced their second leg of the 2019 Haval Outreach expedition. The first week was about the cars and the scenery that… more DSM and Briggs Automotive Company announce collaboration on new Mono R supercar Companies will together showcase potential of 3D printing for car manufacturing Geleen, The Netherlands & Liverpool, United Kingdom, 10 July 2019 - Royal DSM, a global science-based company in Nutrition, Health and Sustainable Living today… more Top industry speakers to address SAMBRA Conference Robert Snook, self-confessed genuine collision industry fan, global speaker, business coach, mentor and CEO of Business Success Global, will be one of the keynote speakers at the 2019 South African Motor Body Repairers’ Association (SAMBRA)… more If our salvation depends on personalities, we are in trouble By hanging the fate of South Africa on the shoulders of people like Cyril Ramaphosa and Busisiwe Mkhwebane, we are setting ourselves up for failure. Only reinvigorated institutions that do not depend on the whims of political personalities can… more MasterDrive Newsletter - 09 July 2019 MasterTips: Distraction – comes down to culture Distraction is a complex issue which is often underestimated. It often relates to tasks drivers have done hundreds, if not thousands of times previously, without incident. Then, a degree of… more Tour de France 2019 - Rejoice in a Century of the Legendary Yellow Jersey Continental is a main partner of Tour de France which takes place from 6 to 28 July 176 riders representing 22 teams will cover a race distance of 3 460 km for the 106th edition All official vehicles of the Tour are equipped with Continental's… more FCA Names Davide Grasso Chief Operating Officer of Maserati; Harald Wester Appointed… Fiat Chrysler Automobiles N.V. (“FCA”) (NYSE: FCAU/MTA: FCA) announced two moves in its leadership team. Davide Grasso, former Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of NIKE’s Converse, joins FCA and is named Chief Operating Officer (COO) of Maserati.… more Volkswagen employees join hands to make a difference More than 200 employees participated in the annual Show of Hands event Skills development centre in Gelvandale renovated and 20 000 meals packed More than 200 Volkswagen Group South Africa (VWSA) employees and their loved ones joined hands this… more Groupe Renault, its group works council and industriall global union sign a global… Aware of the evolution of the world of work, from an economic, technological and social point of view, Groupe Renault today signed a new global agreement "Building the world of work together within Groupe Renault”. Mr. Thierry Bolloré, Chief… more ENGEN Pitch & Polish celebrates ten years An oft-cited statistic in the world of business is that 96% of small businesses will fail within the first ten years of starting up. Celebrating its tenth anniversary this year, the ENGEN Pitch & Polish workshop and competition programme is… more Quality of truck maintenance key to road safety The wear and tear of trucks on our roads is an expensive reality, but the maintenance of trucks is crucial as it has a direct impact on road safety, says Dewald Ranft, Chairman of the Motor Industry Workshop Association (MIWA), a proud… more Driving the evolution of logistics at the click of a mouse Today’s companies require a logistics solution that combines an integration of core services to provide a seamless and swift movement of products from origin to destination. Technology is being used more extensively now than ever before to… more Two South Africans on international crane support team Konecranes South Africa now has two members on an elite team, Marius Naude (Global Technical Support Specialist) and Niekie Erasmus (Senior Service Technician). “Being part of the Global Technical Support group is an honour and an achievement,… more Jeep Brand features prominently in this year's OFF ROAD Magazine Awards Three Jeep® models take top prizes in the 2019 edition of the 4x4 specialist OFF ROAD magazine Readers' Choice Awards. Jeep Wrangler triumphs in the "Off-Road" category for the sixth consecutive year. Jeep Renegade is named best "Sub-Compact… more Digitalise manufacturing with PivotWare from Desoutter Industrial Tools PivotWare from global tightening specialist, Desoutter Industrial Tools, is a holistic process control and work guidance platform that represents a key step in digitalising manufacturing processes and synchronizing with Industry 4.0. A perfect… more ADAC GT Masters: New driver duo Tregurtha / Paul celebrates premiere at Red Bull Ring The ADAC GT Masters race at the beginning of June at the Red Bull Ring in Styria, Austria was something very special for T3 Motorsport: For the first time the Briton William Tregurtha competed together with Maximilian Paul. In the first race… more VWSA supports programme to improve literacy for primary school learners VWSA invested R4 million to support training of educators through Funda Wande Funding will also be used to develop pilot project and tertiary course As part of its goal to promote literacy among learners under the age of 10 years, Volkswagen… more LAST CHANCE to RSVP TODAY for the CYMOT TRADE this Friday Which will prevail - hybrid, electric or gas cars? Three lower-carbon technologies and a host of also-rans are competing to replace internal combustion engine vehicles. Jakkie Olivier, CEO of the Retail Motor Industry Organisation (RMI), takes a look at their advantages and disadvantages. There… more Applications open for 9 non-executive members to serve on the SAICA Board In July 2018 the South African Institute of Chartered Accountants (SAICA) Board announced the establishment of a Governance Review Task Team (GRTT) led by Roy Andersen CA(SA). 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On July 3, at… more African Advanced Manufacturing and Composites Show - Book these business boosting… Six Tips to Make Your Weekend SUV Getaway Extraordinary Taking a much-needed mid-year break is an ideal way to clear your mind and create extraordinary memories with your loved ones Ford shares tips and tricks on how to make the best out of your roadtrip using your SUV With the right vehicle you can… more Classic Automotive Art-on-Leather creations, carved and painted Alan Dent - artist extraordinaire with his innovative special talent of carving his art into leather has added a full range of automotive subjects to his artistic offerings including Family cars, Race cars, Off-road, Super cars, Classics and… more When you’re thinking of investing your savings into a new business venture: Beware these… You may have landed an unexpected windfall through an inheritance or even a lucky lotto ticket or maybe, you are simply a good saver and now have a sizeable nest egg. The money is burning a hole in your pocket as you struggle to make the best… more Goodyear offered tyres for every major aviation segment and highlighted its innovation at… At the recently held 53rd Paris Air Show - the rendezvous of the aviation industry - Goodyear's latest advanced technology & mobility solution concept came under the spotlight: its ultra-lightweight Flight Radial tyre and AERO concept tyre, a… more Happy Birthday Fiat 500 Yesterday evening, the celebrations for the iconic Fiat 500's 62nd birthday began. This year, the first to wish the Fiat brand icon Happy Birthday were the Mirafiori employees and 500 owners who, with their hero, on the roof of the Lingotto, in… more Audi launches virtual reality-enabled car-buying experience First introduction of "Audi VR experience" as part of the Audi sales engagement Audi customer private lounge officially presented at Audi Centre Centurion VR headset lets customers explore their digitally configured Audi in great detail In a… more 7 tips that’ll keep your battery powered up Have you ever experienced the crushing disappointment and frustration of putting the key into your car’s ignition, turning it and hearing nothing but the ominous silence that signifies the battery is no longer functioning? What’s more, this… more Bridgestone Group’s Sustainability Report Details Environmental Success and Reports on… Today (2 July 2019) the Bridgestone Group published its Sustainability Report 2018-2019 highlighting strong progress toward its global commitment to help achieve a more sustainable society. Two years ahead of schedule, the Group exceeded its… more TLT-Turbo Africa Announces Certification Upgrade to ISO 9001:2015 Ventilation solution specialist firm, TLT-Turbo Africa, announces that their ISO certification has been upgraded to ISO 9001:2015. International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 9001:2015 is the most updated standard of its kind and is… more Haval Outreach Expedition 2019 Haval explores "The place of the Rising Sun" No, the Chinese SUV giant didn't make a trip to Japan; "The place of the Rising Sun" is the name of one of South Africa's most beautiful provinces, Mpumalanga, the setting for the 2019 Haval Outreach… more Nominations open for Gumtree Woman in Autos! Gumtree Women in Autos creates a platform to engage and celebrate women in the automotive industry. We need your help finding the women that deserve recognition in our industry. If you have a peer, colleague, friend or idol in the motoring… more MasterTips: Urban survival skills Last month one man was seriously injured and another was killed following hijacking incidents. Carjacking is a major concern in SA, often with tragic consequences. How can we keep ourselves safe should we face… more Start of production for three new BMW 8 Series models New BMW 8 Series Gran Coupé and new BMW M8 Competition Coupé and Convertible roll off the line at BMW Group Plant Dingolfing Today, no fewer than three new models from the BMW 8 Series family will all go into production at BMW Group Plant… more No Code of Conduct but Guidelines instead – what this means for the motor industry The Competition Commission has communicated to all stakeholders in the automotive industry advising that the implementation of a single industry-wide Code of Conduct (Çode) is not feasible. Instead, the Commission intends converting the… more NADA pleads to the South African Reserve Bank to consider lowering interest rates as new… Overall Dealer sales channel for June 2019 – 36,922 new vehicles (passenger and commercial vehicles) were sold on dealer floors in June 2019 (2018: 38,292 showing a -3.6% reduction in sales on dealer floors compared to the same month last year)… more Used Tyres SA and St Stithians Join Forces to Do Good For Mandela Day Used Tyres SA has donated 50 tyres for learners at St Stithians Boys’ College in Sandton to use to create chairs for children at a Johannesburg inner-city school. This as part of the school’s Mandela Day Project. “This year, we learned from one… more This is not something you would want to miss – The CYMOT TRADE SHOW 2019 Gearing up for Southern Africa's inaugural general aviation showcase AERO South Africa will open its doors at Wonderboom National Airport in Pretoria for the first-time later this week. This FREE-to-attend exhibition will feature workshops by over 10 industry experts, demo flights from major local and… more Join the U.S. Embassy Delegation to SEMA and AAPEX 2019 Opinion Piece: Municipalities: Vigilant Communities Essential The Auditor General has painted a grim picture of financial mismanagement in the country’s 257 municipalities, saying accountability continued to deteriorate while irregular expenditure remained high. State capture has had, and is still having,… more Naamsa comment on the June 2019 New Vehicle Sales Statistics The National Association of Automobile Manufacturers of South Africa [NAAMSA] said that the new vehicle sales declining trend continued into June, 2019 although lower passenger car sales had been offset by growth in some of the commercial… more Ulundi Grandad wins a 1.4 Polo Vivo for his granddaughter Congratulations to Johnson B Sibiya, the first of four lucky winners in Engen’s “Ditch the cold and catch the cool competition”. Johnson gifted his new car to his granddaughter, Sinezelwe Sine Sibiya. The brand-new Polo Vivo was handed over at… more ZF Intelligently Designs New Generation 8-speed Automatic Transmission for Hybrid Drives New modular construction system allows for both 48-volt mild hybrids and plug-in hybrids with electric power of up to 160 kilowatts Integrated power electronics simplify flexible production All components and control software have been… more SEMA prepares five custom student Jeep builds for auction Proceeds to support SEMA’s High School Vehicle Build Program and fund future student projects Vehicles to be available through program partner Bring a Trailer Auction Site during “SEMA Week of Customs” beginning July 15 SEMA is preparing for… more DENSO Wiper Systems to Be Established to Offer Safer and More Reliable Wiper Systems Nippon Wiper Blade to be merged with Asahi Manufacturing DENSO Corporation today announced that Nippon Wiper Blade Co., Ltd. and Asahi Manufacturing Co., Ltd., both of which are subsidiaries of DENSO Corporation, will merge on October 1, 2019,… more FAW builds solid foundation with the DSD Group Die Sement Depot (DSD), part of several companies in the Andre Mostert Vervoer (AMV) Group, are proud FAW Trucks users. The Cape Town-based company sell import cement from Vietnam and supplies ready-mix concrete, sand and stone to its clients… more Dunlop Tyres not associated with Dunlop companies in recent Constitutional Court ruling Sumitomo Rubber South Africa (Pty) Ltd (SRSA), manufacturer of the Dunlop, Sumitomo and Falken tyre brands, wishes to confirm that they do not own, nor have any association with the companies listed in the Constitutional Court of South Africa’s… more Punishing Toyoya 1000 desert race adds spice to production vehicle title standings The results of a gruelling Toyota 1000 Desert Race (TDR 1000), the only marathon event on the South African National Cross Country Series (SACCS) calendar, that took place in Botswana recently had a significant effect on the Production Vehicle… more DENSO Foundation Awards Over $1 Million in STEM Education Grants to 26 North American… Grants will foster STEM learning programs to help develop future automotive, manufacturing workforce DENSO, the world’s second largest mobility supplier, announced today it awarded more than $1 million in science, technology, engineering, and… more uYilo Participates at Smarter Mobility Africa 2019, Johannesburg, South Africa uYilo eMobility Programme’s Director, Mr Hiten Parmar will participate as speaker at the inaugural Smarter Mobility Africa summit at the Kyalami Grand Prix Circuit, International Convention Centre during 1st and 2nd October 2019. The national… more Isuzu Arctic AT 35 is The Toughest D-Max Thus Far More than a suspension and body lift 50 units per annum to be assembled locally Isuzu Motors South Africa (IMSAF) has expanded its bakkie offering with the addition of an exclusive new flagship model aimed at avid off-roaders, professionals who… more Groupe Renault inaugurates its new Romanian headquarters “Renault Bucharest Connected” “Renault Bucharest Connected” is Groupe Renault’s new decision-making centre in Romania. 3,200 employees have been brought together in a building that houses the new Design Centre and also the engineering and tertiary functions. The… more Warehouse Manager Drives Away in Brand New Ford Focus, Courtesy of Castrol MAGNATEC All it took was a purchase of 5 litres of Castrol MAGNATEC, a scratch card, a unique code, and attention to detail Winning a brand-new Ford Focus is on the ultimate wish list for many people across South Africa. For Karen Swanepoel, this dream… more African Advanced Manufacturing and Composites Show - Expose your… Tork Craft introduce their Limited-Edition Racing Tool Cabinets, Trollies and Top boxes Designed, specced and manufactured, for racing enthusiasts, drivers, riders, teams, workshops and automotive industry professionals Just launched by Tork Craft is their range of limited-edition Racing Tool cabinets, Trollies and Top boxes, with… more Proudly South-African - Congratulations to AIDC team and Lumen Special Cables The Automotive Industry Development Centre (AIDC), supported a South African automotive company, Lumen Special Cables at the Africa Kaizen Annual Conference (AKAC) where they company won the Excellence Kaizen Award. The event is an initiative… more Jun 28, 2019 Motoring MINI Clubman showcases South African design flair. MINI South Africa’s first local edition of the MINI Clubman, called the Modern African Gentlemen edition, made its stylish debut at a gala event in Johannesburg on Thursday, 27 June. It is the result of an exhaustive and comprehensive campaign… more Jun 28, 2019 Buzz AAPEX 2019 to Recognize Exhibitors with Best Booth Awards AAPEX 2019 has lined up specialists from the exhibition industry to tour the show floor and select Best Booth Award winners using design, staffing and exhibition best practices as the criteria. AAPEX represents the more than $1 trillion global… more Alfa Stelvio ascends to top of the executive SUV servicing podium in 2019 AA Kinsey… Since launching in November 2017, the Alfa Romeo Stelvio has set the bar within the executive SUV class, when it comes to delivering a thrilling driving experience, outstanding performance and for its eye-catching, sporty styling. Now, the 2019… more Jun 28, 2019 Motorsport The 76 degree Rally Poland, valid for the European Championship ERC, will be the third… Two Abarth 124 rally in the Rally Poland: the Italian Andrea Nucita with the Romanian Alina Pop and the Polish team of Dariusz Polonski with Lukasz Sitek. The Abarth 124 rally will be challenged in difficult routes in the Polish race, one of… more Jun 28, 2019 Mobilty Beat Driving Tips for Expectant Mothers: Staying Safe on the Road to Motherhood During pregnancy it is critical to stay safe on the road; Ford have developed top tips for mothers-to-be which will help them stay safe and comfortable while driving. Ford designers and engineers designed an "empathy belly", which simulates the… more Ford Turns Plastic Bottles into Carpets to Help Recycle More Than 1 Billion Drinks… Every Ford EcoSport SUV is fitted with carpets made from hundreds of plastic bottles In six years, the bottles used would stretch more than twice around the world Every year, Ford's use of recycled plastics globally prevents 1.2 billion bottles… more CDK Global launches its Partner Programme at the South African Hot Air Balloon… International automotive tech company looking to partner with innovative tech providers to provide best in-class solutions to car dealers and customers CDK Global, Inc (Nasdaq, CDK), took to the skies to launch its Partner Programme across… more Manufacturing Indaba KwaZulu-Natal extended to 2 days Manufacturing Indaba KwaZulu-Natal has been extended to two days and the exhibition is open to visitors and Purchasing Managers. 14 - 15 August 2019 Save the DateVenue: Durban ICC For more information visit: manufacturingindaba.co.za/mi-kzn For… more Bridgestone introduces Enliten, a new lightweight tyre technology that requires less… Enliten reduces the rolling resistance of a tyre by up to 20%[1] to reduce vehicle fuel consumption and CO2 emissions. The technology enables tyres to be reduced in weight by 10%, with no trade-off on wear life. Enliten also improves the… more Powasol ExtremeX at Royal Show a roaring success thanks to Bobcat B730 TLB The Powasol ExtremeX Regional Championship from 1 to 2 June at the 2019 Royal Agricultural Show in Pietermaritzburg, KwaZulu-Natal was a resounding success thanks to the generous donation of a B730 tractor loader backhoe (TLB) by the Durban… more Bridgestone announces appointment of new CEO Bridgestone South Africa is pleased to announce the appointment of Jacques Fourie as CEO of the company, effective 1 July 2019. Mr Fourie replaces Gavin Young, who stepped down on 7 June. Mr Fourie has had a distinguished career at Cummins… more Messe Frankfurt continues to grow Messe Frankfurt’s growth continued in the past financial year too. Speaking at the Corporate Press Conference earlier today, Wolfgang Marzin, President and Chief Executive Officer of Messe Frankfurt, announced: “We succeeded in setting a new… more Fuel set for July breather Lower international oil prices throughout June have set up a substantial fuel price drop for July, and the reduction could have been greater had it not been for the Rand. This is according to the Automobile Association (AA), which was… more Haval Motors South Africa is about to embark on second annual Outreach Expedition As the leading Chinese brand of SUV's and Bakkies goes from strength to strength in the South African motor industry landscape in terms of sales and dealer infrastructure, the growing brand is not for one minute sitting back in terms of giving… more Dealing with car woes? Understand the complaints process Feeling unhappy with your vehicle’s repairs? The new car you bought, is not what you expected? Jan Schoeman, Chief Operations Officer for the Retail Motor Industry Organisation (RMI), says there is recourse for inefficient servicing of… more Alliance Ventures invests in the mobility house to boost electric mobility Alliance Ventures, the strategic venture capital arm of Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi, announces an investment in The Mobility House, a technology company that provides a platform for integrating vehicle batteries into power grids using intelligent… more The 2019 AA Kinsey Report The 29th year of the Kinsey Report has been given a facelift and is now officially called the AA KINSEY REPORT and as such will appear on the AASA official website. It has been over 18 months since the research was done for the 2017 Report and… more Ford Honors MANN+HUMMEL at 21st Annual World Excellence Awards MANN+HUMMEL honored by Ford Motor Company with an Aligned Business Framework World Excellence Award and a Gold World Excellence Award Ford’s World Excellence Awards honor companies that exceed expectations and achieve the highest levels of… more New edition of the Audi Q7 The Audi Q7 is getting an all-round update. The large SUV features the new design of the Q family - it bears the large octagon-shaped Singleframe grille, with six upright slats providing more presence. As such, the SUV looks even more powerful.… more Mahindra KUV100 NXT best for your budget, says AA-Kinsey Report Most affordable crossover to service and repair on the market Mahindra's KUV100 NXT topped the 2019 AA-Kinsey Report in its category, beating all other compact crossovers in the study and registering as one of the five most affordable vehicles… more Goodyear Eagle F1 SuperSport RS: custom-made tyre for Porsche 911 GT2 RS and GT3 RS The brand-new Goodyear Eagle F1 SuperSport RS has been homologated on the Porsche 911 GT2 RS and Porsche 911 GT3 RS Eagle F1 SuperSport RS tyre marks return of Goodyear to the supercar segment Focus on delivering consumers a great race track… more AA and Kinsey Report form new part(s)nership The 2019 Kinsey Report has arrived and, for the first time in its 29-year history, will be co-branded with the Automobile Association (AA). This partnership between the author Malcolm Kinsey and the AA means the report will from now on… more Circular economy is saving the planet and boosting profits Shoes made from ocean plastics, packaging material made from mushrooms and a green partnership between Ford and Heinz to build car parts from tomato fibre are examples of the circular economy in action. In a traditional linear economy,… more The importance of proper spent oil disposal Anton Niemann, GM Shell Lubricants, explains how the disposal of used motor oil the wrong way has the potential to pollute the environment, noting that we need to recover and recycle as much of it as possible. With engine lubricant technology… more Let my people go: How Africa can save herself The people of Africa have been subjected to multiple injustices, slights, and violence. The list of things inflicted on Africans is endless and has no modern equivalent, except for Asia in geographical terms and the Jews in ethnic terms. These… more Mitsubishi Motors sharing warmth with Hot 91.9 FM's Winter Drive Mitsubishi Motors is known for a host of outstanding characteristics, including keeping your family safe on the road. And now that winter is forcing everyone to cuddle up for a bit of warmth, it has become time for Mitsubishi Motors to also… more MasterDrive Newsletter - 25 June 2019 MasterTips: Flu medication and driving A harsh strain of flu is making its way around South Africa necessitating the use of flu medications. Yet, before you pop some tablets or cough syrup before leaving for work, you may want to reconsider… more Motor body repairers introduce pay before release Effective from, 25 June, members of the South African Motor Body Repairers’ Association (SAMBRA), a proud association of the Retail Motor Industry Organisation (RMI), received the green light to officially implement Pay Before Release (PBR).… more NAAMSA Automotive Conference bookings now open REIMAGINING THE FUTURE TOGETHER The NAAMSA Automotive Conference 2019, in association with the Innovation Group and AutoTrader is a high impact, one-day engagement session that will attract the participation of high-level government leaders,… more Twenty Copywriting Bursaries to be provided through new advertising industry initiative The official industry body for the advertising profession, the Association for Communication and Advertising (ACA) has secured funding toward providing twenty academic bursaries to prospective students looking to enter the exciting world of… more Polaris Ranger 570 for 2019 Cape Epic medical backup Ahead of the Cape Epic, Smith Power Equipment’s dealer, Maverick Motorsport, supplied a customised Polaris Ranger 570 to Mediclinic Southern Africa to help with medical backup during the most televised mountain bike race in the world. A day… more BI appoints Segment Leader for the manufacturing industry Leading supplier Bearings International (BI) has appointed Rudi Rudolph as Segment Leader – Manufacturing. His main focus will be Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) and the steel industry. With six years’ experience at BI, Rudolph began… more BI appoints Business Development Leader for wholesale and retail sector Leading supplier Bearings International (BI) has appointed Kathy Shepherd as Business Development Leader (BDL) – Wholesale and Retail. The latest appointment reflects Shepherd’s strong upwards trajectory at BI, which started with her as… more Goodyear to supply Airbus A321XLR with Flight Radial Tyres The Goodyear Tyre & Rubber Company has been conditionally selected as a supplier by Airbus to provide its Flight Radial tyres as main and nose landing gear for Airbus' new A321XLR aircraft. The Flight Radial, one of Goodyear's most advanced… more Selling your VW Polo GTI? Check out these industry insider tips Finding your next ride is no longer a drawn out and frustrating process spent clicking through endless pages of online listings. Thanks to a new, super detailed vehicle database from AutoTrader, for the first time in South African history you… more Designworks: Mobility beyond. Stimulating ambitious visions of the future With its roots in the industrial design world, Designworks has over the course of more than forty years established itself as a world-class independent design consultancy that drives innovation. It is owned by BMW Group and is part of the… more Local soccer talent showcased at VW Junior Masters tournament 22 young players selected for further training and trials A team of 14 players will represent Volkswagen Market Square at national tournament in December Following an action-packed day of soccer at Volkswagen Group South Africa's (VWSA)… more Carbon-fiber composite manufacturers must focus on cutting costs to drive sluggish… Automotive original equipment manufacturers’ (OEMs’) urgency for weight reduction, improved aesthetics, superior mechanical properties, and cost savings is creating dynamic new product and technology innovations within the automotive composites… more Safe Turning: Right-Turn Assist System for Passenger Cars from Continental Protects… New short-range radar allows for more precise detection of vehicle surroundings Technology forms basis for a Right-Turn Assist Compact radar system operates within high-resolution 77 Gigahertz range Technology company Continental has unveiled a… more Discover Additive Manufacturing The global market for additive manufacturing (AM) was $7.2 billion in 2016, yet it is predicted to be over $21 billion in 2020. Manufacturers of all sizes and in all industries are investing in this new manufacturing process but do you know… more Chennai tech-players to share stage with global technology brands at Automotive… Thiru M.C. Sampath to inaugurate the 2019 edition on 4th July 2019 at Chennai Trade Centre Automotive Engineering Show, India’s leading exhibition focused on automotive manufacturing technologies, will be underway next week, from 04 – 06 July… more MICHELIN Pilot Sport 4S* fitments for the new BMW X3 M and X4 M BMW has chosen the MICHELIN Pilot Sport 4S* (PS4S) as a 21-inch summer tyre fitment for its new high-performance X3 M and X4 M models, and also as the sole fitment for the global press launch of these high-performance vehicles. The new BMW X3… more BMW sets course for a successful Customer Racing future – New entry-level model based on… Next year is set to be a good year for private BMW drivers and teams who battle for race wins and titles around the world. BMW is offering customers with a passion for grassroots motorsport and club racing a global service and technical… more Audi has unveiled its new addition to the Q family: the SQ8 TDI Audi has unveiled the robust, sporty, top-of-the-range new addition to the Q family: the SQ8 TDI. The SUV from Audi now includes a biturbo V8 with 310 kW of power and 900 Nm of torque. This allows the 4.0 TDI to accelerate the SUV coupé like a… more SABS testing conditions in laboratories disrputed by electrical cable theft Yesterday (24 June 2019) in Pretoria, the South African Bureau of Standards (SABS) advised customers that testing conditions have been disrupted as a result of cable theft in the Pretoria area. The unforeseen disruption will cause delays in… more Subaru WRX STI Scores Back-to-Back Class Win in the 47th Nurburgring 24-Hour Race Subaru Corporation is pleased to announce that its motorsports subsidiary, Subaru Tecnica International (STI), took the SP3T class win in the 47th Nürburgring 24-Hour Race held in Germany from June 20 to 23, with the "Subaru WRX STI NBR… more Festival of Motoring 2019 supporting women in autos This year, the Gumtree Women in Autos Conference will be even bigger and better as the Festival of Motoring has stepped in as event host partner. “The Festival of Motoring is thrilled to be partnering Gumtree in this important conference,… more Connected cars and the REVOLUTIONARY ROAD of the future Attributed to Christophe Lepoivre, VP Sales Africa, Mobile Connectivity Solutions at Gemalto. Connected and autonomous cars have been in the works for years, but this futuristic technology is fast becoming a reality. It’s not only in the… more Garmin® South Africa promotes a healthy way of living. With its focus on creating and maintaining a healthy lifestyle, Garmin South Africa is proud to announce the launch of the Garmin Mobile Health Unit. The Garmin Mobile Health Unit is customised with equipment needed for eye tests and dental… more Motor repairers respond positively to used oil management The independent motor repairers industry is responding positively to efforts to manage used oil, says Chairman of the Motor Workshop Industry Association (MIWA), Dewald Ranft. MIWA is a proud member of the Retail Motor Industry Organisation… more Van Dyk/Rust win the 2019 Road To Dakar The 2019 Road to Dakar, which was again supported by Toyota SA Motors, saw the Namibian crew of Jaco van Dyk and navigator Michel Rust take the honours, in their Red-Lined Motorsport Nissan Navara. The pair were locked in a tight tussle for the… more Opinion Piece: JIT is key to optimising the FMCG supply chain The ability to manufacture ‘just enough’ stock to cover orders and deliver ‘just enough’ product to every retailer is the optimal supply chain scenario in the Fast-Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) industry. This is known as Just in Time (JIT)… more Hyundai 2nd highest non-premium brand in JD Power Initial Quality Study New vehicle quality across the entire Hyundai line-up resulted in the company being ranked as the second-highest non-premium brand in JD Power's 2019 US Initial Quality Study (IQS)SM for the second consecutive year. Hyundai owners reported… more SONA: Big (pipe)dreams, no detail President Cyril Ramaphosa delivered his second State of the Nation Address (SONA) on 20 June. The speech was filled with rousing language as well as conciliatory offers to work together with members of the opposition. Unfortunately, no new… more Ferrari F8 Tributo: A celebration of excellence The mid-rear-engined two-seater berlinetta that pays homage to the most powerful V8 in Ferrari history debuts in South Africa: The Ferrari F8 Tributo makes its official debut at an exclusive private preview hosted by Scuderia South Africa, the… more CeMAT ASIA expecting well over 100,000 attendees Asia’s biggest intralogistics fair expands its lead APEX Asia fair co-located as ideal complement Launch of new showcase: Hydrogen & Fuel Cells ASIA From 23 to 26 October 2019, the 20th edition of CeMAT ASIA will be staged at the Shanghai New… more The Squeaky Wheel - 21 June 2019 A very special moment this week was the privilege to donate a car seat from The Car Seats for Kids campaign to a family in need. Little Taygon has cerebral palsy and at 2 years old she only weighs 8 kg. She is such a cute little poppet and now… more Product innovation in the spotlight Entries are open for Automechanika Johannesburg’s 2019 Innovation Awards. Winning products will receive winning treatment at the automotive aftermarket’s event of the year, to be held from September 18 to 21, at the National Exhibition Centre,… more African Advanced Manufacturing and Composites Show - Be Recognised Calm Amidst Chaos: Bringing Zen to Your Daily Commute Tips to relieve stress when the highway turns into a parking lot, or you’re trapped in a gridlock How to turn your dreaded daily commute into a time of contemplation, entertainment, or education Modern cars are designed to accommodate longer… more Young entrepreneurs groomed through VWSA partnership VWSA and Young Entrepreneurs host programme to train children in entrepreneurship VWSA continues programmes to uplift youth In the spirit of Youth month, a new generation of entrepreneurs were groomed this week, through a holiday programme… more Fine-tuning a winning formula Midlife update further enhances advanced, dynamic Honda Civic Athletic, low-slung design gains fresher, more focussed elements Comfortable, high-tech interior undergoes further refinement Existing choice of… more President sets bar high but execution will be a challenge The National Employers’ Association of South Africa (NEASA) has described President Cyril Ramaphosa’s State of the Nation Address in Parliament last night as full of great and ambitious ideas. With only ten years to go to 2030, the President… more Protecting crops and reducing farming costs An advanced range of field monitoring equipment is allowing local farmers to fine-tune growing conditions and maximise yields of their crops, while avoiding potentially catastrophic crop failures as a result of pests or chemical damage. HOBOnet… more Dachser Logistics – going green in the city New emission-free logistics solutions are being pioneered by global logistics company Dachser in cities across Europe. The pilot projects build on new electromobility concepts and adapts city logistics processes to tomorrow’s needs, offering… more One for all: Versatile control arm in MEYLE-HD quality now also available for Land Rover… New MEYLE-HD control arm kit replaces all three OE control arm versions of Land Rover models Range Rover IV and Range Rover Sport Individual camber setting by continuously variable adjustable ball joint Sustainable repair solution with… more Black Style Packages for the Volkswagen Touareg and Tiguan models The Black Style Package is only available on the Touareg Executive model as well as Comfortline and Highline trims on the Tiguan A new styling package designed to enhance the exterior looks and on-road presence of Volkswagen's SUVs, is now… more This Youth month Engen celebrates a future leader from Estcourt Youth Month is special as it provides an opportunity to reflect on the importance of helping young gifted South Africans explore new horizons and reach for the stars. Nokubonga Ngqulunga, a young chemical engineer is one of many whose horizons… more Maserati South Africa launches driver training programme European Automotive Imports South Africa (EAISA), the official importer of Maserati vehicles in South Africa, has launched a new certified advanced driver training programme, the aim of which is to help Maserati enthusiasts perfect their… more Top Audi Dealers recognised for excellent performance Dealer excellence celebrated within the areas of sales, service, parts and accessories and Audi Financial Services Audi Silver Arrow Awards represent the pinnacle of top performance for the brand Audi Centre Arcadia wins the prestigious Audi… more Guidelines for The Mod Squad With more than half a million South Africans browsing Gumtree for parts, there’s a booming online aftermarket for car parts and accessories which is being accessed largely by informal mechanics indulging in their favourite hobby. But whether… more Eqstra wins SANBS tender Eqstra Fleet Management, a division of the enX Group, has been awarded a contract to supply value added products and services to the South African National Blood Service’s fleet of 368 vehicles. The South African National Blood Service (SANBS)… more Two themes for this year's NAAMSA Automotive Conference There will be two themes for this year's NAAMSA Automotive Conference which will be held at the Kyalami Grand Prix Circuit and Conference Centre in Midrand on 22 August as part of the annual Festival of Motoring presented by WesBank. The themes… more Celebrating Rolls Royce: the hidden tragedy behind the emblem On the 18th of June 1935, the trademark Rolls Royce was registered for the first time, but the company has been operational since 1904. Founded by Charles Rolls (owner of one of the UK's first dealerships) and Henry Royce (an engineer), they… more Investing in a sustainable energy future Anton Niemann, Shell Downstream GM Lubricants, delves into how natural gas has provided a source of current and future energy production, and how this has benefited the engine lubricant sector. It is no secret that as global populations… more An illegal vehicle never becomes legal No matter how long you keep an illegal vehicle in your possession it never becomes legal, says Lee Dutton, Executive Director, International Vehicle Identification Desk (IVID) Southern Africa. In the light of a recent article issued by Business… more Hengst supplies innovative oil filter module for transversely mounted Mercedes diesel… Hybrid design cuts down weight and boosts efficiency The four-cylinder OM 654 unveiled by Mercedes-Benz is the first of a new family of engines that break new ground thanks to their eco-friendly after-treatment of exhaust gases in compliance… more At MAUTO, three concept cars: Alfa Romeo Proteo, Fiat Scia and Lancia Dialogos Today, at the National Automobile Museum in Turin, the exhibition"Auto&Design - Il Progetto Raccontato" opens, dedicated to the first 40 years of this prestigious magazine. On show will be 3 concept cars: the Alfa Romeo Protèo (1991), Fiat Scia… more The 500 Family Hits Three Million Sales in Europe This is just the latest record of the extraordinary line-up that includes the 500, the 500L and the 500X and which is constantly growing and evolving to satisfy an increasingly diverse clientele in terms of age, tastes and mobility needs The… more Open letter to new Minister of Transport from the AA Dear Minister Mbalula Congratulations on your appointment to a key Ministry in the South African government. You become the eighth minister of this department since 1994, and we pledge our support to you, as we have done with Mr Maharaj in… more OPEL & Bathu Launch the most Expensive, most Exclusive sneaker in Mzansi! One Car. Two South African Entrepreneurs. A Shared Vision. Unbox Your Potential! OPEL Distributor recently had the privilege of shooting a video with two extraordinary South African Entrepreneurs. Their stories and vision fully embrace and… more FCA Heritage at the "Vernasca Silver Flag 2019" The 24th re-enactment of the Castell'Arquato-Vernasca hill climb, open only to racing cars built from the early 20C to 1972, takes place from 28 to 30 June. To celebrate the Fiat (120 years) and Abarth (70 years) anniversaries, the FCA Heritage… more Different ways to Network Effectively at Manufacturing Indaba Manufacturing Indaba attracts delegates from across Africa who are looking for ideas and collaborators to create meaningful outcomes. Creating new business connections through the various networking opportunities remains one of the big reasons… more The importance of undercover agents in transport The transportation industry provides a vital service to the South African business industry at large. Transporting goods and supplies from one location to another is a vital, but also very risky business. Trucks and other modes of… more MasterTips: Four reasons tech saves lives Can the rapid advancement of vehicle technology result in a decrease in the number of collisions, particularly those involving pedestrians and at nighttime? Research suggests this might be possible.… more New cooperation between Automechanika and IBIS The IBIS (International Bodyshop Industry Symposium) global conferencing platform and the international Automechanika trade fair brand are coordinating their schedules: the upcoming Automechanika fairs in Shanghai and Frankfurt will each… more New career paths carved out for youth in the truck business WITH over 50% of the youth in South Africa currently facing unemployment, Isuzu is turning the tide by setting an industry benchmark in the automotive industry. Isuzu Motors South Africa is the first OEM to invest in the development of… more Challenging Desert Race awaits Special Vehicle teams in Botswana The Toyota Botswana 1000 Desert Race (TDR 1000), round three of the South African National Cross Country Series (SACCS) that takes place on 21, 22 and 23 June from Selebi Phikwe in Botswana, will pose a huge challenge for teams in the Special… more Isuzu Truck World leads the way in youth development WITH the youth unemployment rate reaching dismal heights in 2019, Isuzu is partnering with tertiary institutions to help get students ready for the workplace. Isuzu dealerships are taking the lead in providing work-based internships, and one… more Ford Struandale Engine Plant Geared up to Meet Growing International Demand Production of 2.0 Bi-Turbo and Single Turbo engines commenced on all-new assembly line at the end of 2018 in preparation for recent launch of New Ranger, Ranger Raptor and New Everest Installed capacity for up to 250 000 engines per year: 120… more Fuel relief as oil eases Retreating oil prices have painted a rosier picture for South African fuel users than has been the case for much of 2019. This is according to the Automobile Association (AA) which was commenting on unaudited mid-month fuel price data released… more Going to be towing these school holidays? Know the rules With the Winter school holiday time here, many drivers will be hitting the roads with trailers, boats and caravans in tow. “Whatever you are towing it should be done right to avoid damage to your vehicle and accidents on our roads. It’s also… more Ford and World Vision Introduce Innovative Water Generating Project for Drought-Stricken… World Vision South Africa selected as a winner of the 2018 Bill Ford Better World Challenge, awarded $200 000 grant in conjunction with Ford Motor Company Fund Additional $130 000 funding received from Ford Research and Advanced Engineering… more Automechanika Shanghai 2019 embraces the evolving automotive ecosystem Long-time supporters of Automechanika Shanghai eagerly await the 15th edition of the fair, and following another record breaking year, anticipation is higher than ever. The show stands as a dedicated platform for world-renowned industry leaders… more Kubota tractors fit the bill for Madikwe Berries Having started operations back in May 2017, Madikwe Berries will soon start its first harvests. Given the sensitive nature of its operations, management considered several tractor brands, but it was Kubota which ticked all the right boxes. Just… more Ford's Expansion Unleashes New Potential for South Africa Extensive investment in Ford's local operations has enabled highest-ever production capacity of up to 168 000 vehicles per year and crucial export-driven success Ford continues setting the trends with New Ranger, New Everest and the exciting… more One Hundred-Thousand FireFly Turbo Engines Made Yet another manufacturing milestone for the FCA Powertrain plant in Bielsko-Biala, one of the most innovative engine factories in the world and World Class Manufacturing Gold Medal holder since 2012. The new generation of FireFly Turbo 1.0 and… more Alpine unveils new Alpine A110S A110S is the latest addition to the lightweight sports car range An intense Alpine driving experience and daily usability Refined design elements highlight the A110S ‘s sporting character More power and a specific chassis setup Costing from… more SA Taxi makes taxi ownership more affordable SA Taxi has advanced its efforts to overcome the financial, structural and legislative hurdles facing the taxi industry by providing qualifying taxi owners with access to more affordable vehicle finance. The ground-breaking transformational… more SEMA eNews, Vol. 22, No. 24 Industry Indicators: Economic and Trade Uncertainty Persists, But U.S. Economy Remains Resilient While the economic picture has worsened, higher tariffs are increasing uncertainty and global growth is slowing, although it doesn’t yet appear to… more Alfa Romeo welcomes the Gumball 3000 to Balocco The Stelvio Quadrifoglio with the Carrera crew on board stars in the spectacular parade with the supercars taking part in the 21th Gumball 3000. At its side, the "Alfa Romeo Racing" special series cars, with Antonio Giovinazzi at the wheel of… more MFC to partner with Gumtree on Pre-Owned Car Awards MFC, a division of Nedbank, will partner with Gumtree South Africa to find the best pre-owned cars on the market for the third annual 2019 Pre-Owned Car Awards. This year's event will be bigger and better than ever, with 12 categories and 60… more African Advanced Manufacturing and Composites Show - Expose your product/service to buyers Click here to book your Expo stand more Ford Earns Gold at 2019 NADA Dealer Satisfaction Index Awards Fifth consecutive Gold award for Ford in Dealer Satisfaction Index (DSI) awards Annual survey conducted by the National Automobile Dealers' Association (NADA) DSI survey measures dealers' satisfaction with respective automotive brands Ford… more Africa Automation Fair 2019 wraps up with strong growth Key event reflects SA’s growing interest in IIot/4IR Africa Automation Fair, the key networking platform for the Industrial Automation and Smart Control Industry, ended on a high note at the Ticketpro Dome in Johannesburg last week, with an 11%… more Goodyear announces return to Le Mans 24 hours and FIA World Endurance Championship Goodyear has announced that it will re-enter European and International sportscar racing by developing a new range of tyres for the FIA World Endurance Championship (WEC), including the Le Mans 24-hour race. The FIA World Endurance Championship… more Ten in a row for Engen: SA’s coolest Petroleum Brand Engen has again been voted the “Coolest Petroleum Brand” in the Sunday Times Generation Next awards. This is the tenth consecutive year that South Africa’s youth have backed Engen, reaffirming the company’s uncontested brand leadership and… more Lead batteries poised to support electric vehicle charging stations PLANS to introduce lead battery-supported electric vehicle (EV) charging stations have moved a step closer thanks to funding through a competitive grant awarded by the U.S. state of Missouri, made possible by funds from the U.S. Department of… more Safety Reminders for Motorists from Tiger Wheel & Tyre Every motorist's goal is to journey safely from point A to point B, and Tiger Wheel & Tyre's goal is to help you do exactly that. To that end, the company offers these reminders and advice for everyday driving. Decoding Route Markers As common… more All eyes on the newly appointed minister of small business – will she deliver? With the shock decline in gross domestic product of 3.2% in the first quarter from a 1.4% expansion in the prior three months, can government live up to its post-election hype and deliver on its promises? This contraction, the highest in a… more Register now to hear the Ministers and Global Experts speak on 25-26 June 2019 Attend the conference and hear manufacturing experts, including Ministers and Global Experts, debate the most important trends in manufacturing and share their experiences. With an impressive line-up of international and local speakers, you’ll… more How South Africa is leading the way for the automotive battery How much do you know about your car battery? If you’re like most people, chances are you think the car battery is a black box that starts your car and that you don’t really think too much about…until it fails. The humble and understated… more Buy with your head, not your heart With fuel on the increase and the cost of living always on the rise, many South Africans are looking at ways to decrease expenses. One of these ways is buying second-hand when it comes to cars. “It’s so important to buy with your head and not… more Volvo Cars and Uber present production vehicle ready for self-driving Volvo Cars, a leader in automotive safety, and Uber, the leading ride-hailing firm, today present a jointly developed production car capable of driving by itself, the next step in the strategic collaboration between both companies. Uber and… more Fiat to be alongside FIGC for another four years The sponsorship agreement between FCA and FIGC has been renewed for another four years. Fiat will be Top Partner and Official Car of the Italian Football Team confirming a time-honoured partnership that reasserts common values capable of… more Volkswagen supports Wilderness Foundation in empowering youth VWSA has assisted the Foundation since 2015 through vehicle support 121 youths were reached and 183 students benefited from training since October 2018 Uitenhage - An ongoing partnership between Volkswagen Group South Africa (VWSA) and local… more SA’s first ever comprehensive vehicle taxonomy database Imagine there was just one place you could go to for every morsel of information you need on a vehicle that you are selling or buying. Now you can thanks to a comprehensive database that contains exactly that, and you can find it under the hood… more Mahindra awards its top performing dealers The night belonged to Mahindra Groblersdal, Mahindra Witbank and Mahindra Midrand. These three dealers won the Mahindra Dealer of the Year Awards 2018/19 for the small, medium and large dealer categories respectively. They received their cash… more Building an inclusive circular economy: recycling with reclaimers. a Johannesburg pilot The 5th of June was World Environment Day; the UN's single most important day for driving global awareness and encouraging action for the protection of our environment. Timed to coincide with World Environment Day Unilever South Africa, the… more Multiple road funding methods including e-tolls required in South Africa - economist South Africa cannot put all its road funding eggs in one basket. This is according to Mike Schüssler, an economist at economists.co.za. During a recent presentation at the Transport Forum, Schüssler explained that South Africa is an atypical… more 2 weeks to go: Don’t miss these Key Panel Discussions at Manufacturing Indaba OFFICIAL OPENING PANEL African Ministerial Panel: Vision to ActionManufacturing as a powerhouse of emerging countries and economies Emerging economies have recognised the importance of supporting industrial development as a means to achieving… more More businesses closing, urgent reform required Stats SA’s April Statistics of Liquidations and Insolvencies paint a very grim picture. The number of business liquidations increased by 53.1% between April 2018 and April 2019. The number of insolvencies increased by 30.1% between March 2018… more SAICA leads the way in developing uniform financial reporting guidelines for public… The South African Institute of Chartered Accountants (SAICA) is leading the way in improving the financial management environment of public school through the development of proposed uniform financial reporting guidelines which have been… more Some of the rarest and most unusual vintage cars for sale in SA right now Cars have never been more comfortable, safe or speedy than they are today but every car enthusiast has a classic or vintage model from years gone by that they aspire to own. The appeal is in the design, says Jeff Osborne of Gumtree Auto. "These… more AAPEX 2019 Lines Up Top Training Partners Several industry organizations will bring their training expertise to this year’s AAPEXedu, offering a mix of classroom, hands-on and underhood sessions to keep automotive repair professionals, auto parts retailers and warehouse distributors… more Violence and declining GDP impact truck sales The limping South African economy has impacted the transport sector for the first time in many months. In a year-to-date comparison at the end of May, growth in the total commercial vehicle has shrunk to 2.3%, to reach a total of 10 252 units.… more Opel Distributor invites you to view the unboxing of the most expensive & exclusive… Opel is proud to present South Africa's most expensive sneakers valued at R365 900. These limited edition Corsa GSi Mesh Bathu shoes are exclusively for Corsa GSi owners only. Enjoy the UNBOXING of these exclusive Corsa GSi Mesh Bathu shoes… more The Productivity / Technology trap The tyre industry is a microcosm of the dilemma in which South African manufacturers find themselves. By Jacques Rikhotso, Manufacturing Director, Bridgestone Many of South Africa’s industries have been built on the back of abundant cheap… more Jacksons Isuzu Queenstown has got a heart for blood IT is no coincidence that Queenstown is situated in the heart of the Eastern Cape. In this town known for being the middle-point of the province, you will also find a dealership with a heart to match. Jacksons Isuzu Queenstown is as entrenched… more MasterTips: Fatigue management for truck drivers While other industries implement a range of fatigue management strategies, truck drivers in SA can still be at risk. A new, world-first, study into fatigue in heavy vehicles has some startling… more Mottling - no thanks! Spies Hecker Tips The basecoat is applied and as it starts to dry, irregularities slowly become visible. But this problem can be avoided. Evgeny Khmelev, Head of Training for Spies Hecker Europe, Middle East and Africa, uses Permahyd® Hi-TEC 480 Basecoat to… more Continental Extends Production Facilities in Lousado, Portugal, with Investments of… New production facilities for radial off-the-road (OTR) tires is part of Continental’s growth strategy Vision 2025 Both earthmoving and port radial tires larger than 24 inches will roll-off the new assembly line More than 100 additional jobs… more The all-new Renault KOLEOS becomes an even more compelling SUV offering The New-Generation Renault KOLEOS entered the S.A. market in February 2019. It has been well received by virtue of its extremely competitive pricing for a high-end SUV, loaded with technologically advanced features. The Renault KOLEOS is… more Easing the pain of liquid spill clean-ups Well-known manufacturer Pratley recently identified a need for a product that can be used in pollution control. More specifically, in the easy and efficient clean-up of liquid spills in the mining and other industrial sectors. The result was… more BLSA CEO Mr Bonang Mohale receives the FMF 10th Luminary award BLSA CEO Mr Bonang Mohale receives the FMF 10th Luminary award for his contribution to SA’s business community and defending the rights of all South Africans. Today, 11 June 2019, Mr Bonang Mohale, highly respected businessman and CEO of… more It depends on ‘US’ not ‘THEM’ - by Gerhard Papenfus Many South Africans are waiting for some sort of extraordinary intervention to save us from our national predicament. Who will lead us to a better place, they wonder - while they sit and wait. The ANC won the election comfortably, but what does… more Tech majors to showcase latest automotive manufacturing advancements at Automotive… Bharat Forge, Festo India, Nikon India, Sick India, Tal Manufacturing, Wipro 3D sign up for the 12th edition; to bring pioneering innovations to the auto-hub of Chennai Every major technological shift reflects a quantum leap in automotive… more Isuzu Staff hit the beaches this weekend TWO Isuzu bakkies were filled to the brim with at least half a ton of waste collected on Port Elizabeth's beach front between Pollock beach and Shark Rock Pier on Saturday. Partnering with local conservation organisation Sustainable Seas Trust… more Prevention Is Better Than Cure Doubts concerning the efficacy of electronic alarms fitted to certain brands have resulted in an upswing in demand for more traditional security systems, specifically those which operate on a mechanical principle. That’s according to Manuel… more Gold for Mazda SA at the 2019 National Automobile Dealers' Association Dealer… Mazda retained its position as the fourth highest ranked South African motor brand in overall dealer satisfaction. The company was awarded a third consecutive Gold for achieving a benchmark score of 82% in the Passenger and Light Commercial… more Cummins continues to drive growth in Africa with service focus and latest technology Cummins plans to cap its centennial year by setting a new record in 2019, manufacturing over 1.5 million engines, and servicing about 12 million engines in the field globally. “What that means is that there are big opportunities for business,… more Goodyear EfficientGrip Performance - the high performance, fuel saving tyre now produced… The EfficientGrip Performance, with its distinctive ZAF-marking on the sidewall, now includes adaptations for local, challenging conditions, making the tyre even stronger, to ensure better tread wear and increased mileage. The EfficientGrip… more XC marks the spot! The premium car market is plummeting – not just here in South Africa, but also in Europe. Local sales are down 20% to date this year, while European sales of premium large cars declined by 13% in the first quarter of 2019. 1. The decline in the… more Toyota and Subaru Agree to Jointly Develop BEV-dedicated Platform and BEV SUV Toyota Motor Corporation (Toyota) and Subaru Corporation (Subaru) disclosed today that they have agreed to jointly develop a platform dedicated to battery electric vehicles (BEVs) for midsize and large passenger vehicles and to jointly develop… more Mitsubishi Motors celebrates a decade of i-MiEV, pioneering mass-production electric… Mitsubishi Motors Corporation (MMC) marked the 10th anniversary of its launch of the zero-emission i-MiEV city car, which paved the way for the automotive industry's seismic shift towards mass-produced electric vehicles (EV). Since its release,… more CAPAS 2019 closed, driving the market development of Southwest China through new events… The sixth edition of the Chengdu International Trade Fair for Automotive Parts and Aftermarket Services (CAPAS) concluded to a high note on 25 May 2019 at the Chengdu Century City New International Exhibition & Convention Center in China.… more Do you know how to access the African market? African countries have taken commendable steps to boost the manufacturing sector. The launch of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) in March 2018 aims to create a single market for goods and services in Africa in order to… more Mathe to commission new retread recycling plant at Hammarsdale Tyre retreading is big business in South Africa and Mathe Group, one of South Africa’s largest used radial truck tyre recycling operations, will be cashing in on this with a multi-million-rand investment in a new line to recycle waste rubber… more Another opportunity for Volkswagen to stamp its authority on GTC series Volkswagen's GTC drivers ready for Port Elizabeth battle Keagan Masters and Daniel Rowe both chasing after top spot on the points table Volkswagen hoping to continue domination of the manufacturers' standings Liebenberg and Wood set to fight… more Consistency the name of the game for SACCS Special Vehicle and SXS leaders Consistency has been the name of the game for the leaders in the Special Vehicle Championship as well as the Side x Side National Championship in the 2019 South African National Cross Country Series (SACCS). With the season reaching the halfway… more Haval Goes for GOLD On The evening of Thursday 6 June, the top brass of the South African Motor Industry congregated at the glass cathedral of vehicle asset finance that is the home of Wesbank for the annual NADA DSI awards. In layman's terms, the National… more Mahindra takes gold in 2019 NADA Awards Mahindra South Africa struck Gold at the National Automobile Dealers' Association (NADA) annual awards dinner. The group won a Gold Award in the Dealer Satisfaction Index (DSI) rankings, which tests dealers' satisfaction with the way a brand… more Alfa Romeo at the 21st Gumball 3000 An epic journey across 11 countries on board a Stelvio Quadrifoglio with a very special livery, a one-off designed for the occasion by the Alfa Romeo Design Centre. The on-road adventure involves over one hundred supercars, prototypes and… more BMW and Jaguar Land Rover collaboration targets slice of 19m electric vehicle sales per… Following the recent news that Jaguar Land Rover and BMW are to work together on electric vehicle components; David Leggett, Automotive Editor at GlobalData, a leading data and analytics company, offers his view on the news: “News that these… more Minesh Bhagaloo Appointed General Manager Communications for Ford in South Africa Ford Motor Company this week announced that Minesh Bhagaloo has been appointed General Manager Communications for Ford Motor Company in South Africa, effective 1 June 2019. Bhagaloo has been Product Communications Manager since joining Ford in… more Awards recognise Imperial Logistics’ pharmaceutical marketing and distribution… Recent awards presented to Imperial Logistics’ African Regions operations reflect the organisation’s outstanding marketing and distribution capabilities for pharmaceuticals, healthcare and medical products, as well as Imperial Logistics’… more Messe Frankfurt India announces E-waste Collection Drive this World Environment Day With Global Exhibition Day and World Environment Day being celebrated internationally on 5th June 2019, Messe Frankfurt Trade Fairs India has announced an E-Waste Collection Drive at their headquarters in Mumbai with an aim to spread major… more Subaru wins big at 2018-2019 JNCAP assessments 2019 Forester wins Grand Prix award for achieving the highest score ever tested by JNCAP 2019 Forester, XV and Impreza all receive the top rating of Advanced Safety Vehicle Triple Plus (ASV +++) Subaru Corporation has announced that the all-new… more Automotive Industry Stakeholders Gather Under One Roof at Prestigious Annual Dealer… The National Automobile Dealers’ Association (NADA) Dealer Satisfaction Index DSI forms vital link between dealers and manufacturers Results this year demonstrate strengthening of relationships between dealers and manufacturers Johannesburg,… more African Advanced Manufacturing and Composites Show - Calling on emerging, black suppliers… Hankook Land Cruiser Fees & Afrika rekord : Sondela Nature Reserve & Spa : 6-8 AUG 2019 MANN+HUMMEL Recognized by General Motors as a 2018 Supplier of the Year MANN+HUMMEL was named a Supplier of the Year by General Motors during their 27th annual ‘Supplier of the Year’ awards ceremony held in Detroit in May. It is the 24th time MANN+HUMMEL has received the award. “We hold our suppliers to a high… more DENSO Invests $1.95M to Open Technical Training Center in Battle Creek, Michigan, to… Investment will support DENSO technical talent, ensuring they have the skills necessary to succeed in the changing automotive industry DENSO, the world’s second largest mobility supplier, has invested $1.95 million to open the North Technical… more Measure Two Popular International Vehicles at the SEMA Garage For the past nine years since its inception, the SEMA International Vehicle Measuring Program’s (IVMP) goal has been to make it easier for members to access popular international… more The Voice of Retreading© June 6, 2019 Making the Case for Retreads How retreads can help reduce a fleet’s tire expense, and its impact on the environment. Tires can be one of the most costly maintenance items for a heavy duty commercial truck fleet. With the amount of time trucks… more Independence within the disabled community is becoming far more of a focus Independence within the disabled community is becoming far more of an important focus and as such the use of one’s own vehicle without assistance is an integral part of that, says Dominic Sierra, Mobility Consultant at Chairman Industries. The… more Ford Offers Individual Style with Trendy New Figo Blu Special edition Ford Figo Blu 1.5 TiVCT MT five-door hatchback, limited run of 360 units Sporty 15-inch alloy wheels, unique styling enhancements and three colour choices: Moondust Silver, Oxford White and Smoke Grey Vibrant interior with… more DHL rolls out e-commerce platform to more African markets following initial success Platform has been rolled out to nine more countries across Sub Saharan Africa DHL Africa eShop sees impressive growth in first seven weeks; Platform has been rolled out to nine more countries across Sub Saharan Africa; Growing demand for online… more Municipalities continue to struggle with appointing qualified CFOs The Municipal Finance Management Act, No 56 of 2003 (MFMA) and the Public Finance Management Act, No 1 of 1999 (PFMA) require that the chief financial officer (CFO) be responsible for the effective financial management of the institution… more You are invited to register NOW for free entrance to visit the upcoming Manufacturing… 25 - 26 June 2019, Sandton Convention Centre You are invited to join us in the exhibition hall and network with forward-thinking organisations including local, national and global brands presenting their innovative solutions and technologies.… more Hyundai's 'rescue mission' keeps team in WRC lead A dramatic final day at Rally de Portugal saw the Hyundai Motorsport team claim their 50th WRC podium result after Thierry Neuville and Nicolas Gilsoul fought hard right to the end to secure second place, picking up four extra points in the… more Texting While Driving? It’s Like Driving with Your Eyes Closed Talking on cell phones – handheld or hands-free – affects our driving Hands-free devices do not eliminate distraction It's important to abandon hands-free even though the law permits it Every text, emoji and selfie which captures your attention… more Tiger Wheel & Tyre is Now Welcoming Customers in Groblersdal A new Tiger Wheel & Tyre has opened in Groblersdal at the corner of Barlow and Hereford roads, bringing with it the legendary, award-winning service that has made the brand South Africa's best-loved and most trusted in the retail wheel and tyre… more Haval South Africa celebrates their second birthday with their customers at the first… Saturday 1 June was somewhat of a special day for Haval Motors South Africa. May marked the brand's second anniversary since they started trading in South Africa as a wholly owned subsidiary to founding company, Great Wall Motor Corporation. To… more After terrible GDP growth numbers, the time has come to abandon fiscal stimulus The latest GDP numbers show that the South African economy declined by 3.2% for the first quarter of 2019. This comes after President Ramaphosa announced a R50 billion stimulus package in September 2018. Since that stimulus followed on a decade… more FCA and DSV land top spot on the award podium for their benchmark warehousing… Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) South Africa and Warehouse Service Provider, DSV Solutions, has scooped a Branch of the Year award for the second time in three years. This award recognises consistent and reliable service delivery, and the… more Nissan to create over 1000 jobs in the automotive sector An estimated 1,200 jobs to be created across the value chain Investments to grow the local component supplier industry Five new black-owned suppliers to be developed Nissan will boost employment in South Africa, with local production of the… more Groupe Renault expresses its disappointment after withdrawal of FCA merger proposal Groupe Renault expresses its disappointment not to have the opportunity to continue to pursue the proposal of FCA (Fiat Chrysler Automobiles). We are gratified by the constructive approach of Nissan and wish to thank FCA for their efforts and… more FCA withdraws merger proposal to Groupe Renault IMPORTANT NOTICE By reading the following release, you agree to be bound by the following limitations and qualifications: This press release is for informational purposes only and is not intended to and does not constitute an offer or… more Advanced Manufacturing Awards to recognise and inspire South Africa's innovators Leading lights in the field of advanced technology, including 4IR will be acknowledged at South Africa's official National Advanced Manufacturing Innovation Awards on November 27. The National Advanced Manufacturing Innovation Awards, is… more All Five Ford GTs Prepared for Multi-Manufacturer Battle at Le Mans The Ford Chip Ganassi Racing Ford GTs are ready to compete in the final Le Mans of Ford Motor Company's current GT programme Customer team, Keating Motorsports, excited to be joining the team at Le Mans with their #85 Ford GT The Ford Le Mans… more Autoboys welcomes CompComm decision to convert motor code into law After hearing over 80 stakeholders’ viewpoints regarding anti-competitive behaviour in the automotive industry, the Competition Commission has commendably decided to take a draft motor code one step further by seeking to implement it in law.… more Opel introduces Diesel economy in the Crossland X Enjoy 1.6TD (Turbo Diesel) powertrain… Opel Crossland X Enjoy 1.6TD - Economic, versatile, nimble, spacious & adaptable. Unitrans Opel Distributor has initiated shipping of the Opel Crossland X Enjoy 1.6TD (Turbo Diesel) Manual Transmission to the South African shores, with the… more BMW Group and Jaguar Land Rover announce collaboration for next-generation… BMW “Gen 5” eDrive technology supports future evolutions with Jaguar Land Rover Both companies share vision of future-oriented drive technologies As it develops its plans for the mobility of the future, the BMW Group is increasingly focusing on… more Shell launches e-fluids to optimise electric vehicle performance Shell has announced the launch of its new range of fluids specifically designed to work in battery electric vehicles (EVs). These E-Transmission Fluids, E-Thermal Fluids and E-Greases are positioned to make battery EVs perform better and be… more Collaboration key to driving SA’s 4IR progress Collaboration across industry, public and private sector and among civil society will be crucial for driving Fourth Industrial Revolution progress, speakers said at the opening day of Africa Automation Fair and the Connected Industries… more SAA Financial Chaos: FMF submits PAIA applications re SAA and SAX overdue financial… The Free Market Foundation (FMF) is submitting PAIA applications to enable the public to understand the true extent of the financial chaos that exists within South African Airways (SAA) and SA Express (SAX). Following the resignation letter of… more The impact of load shedding on Manufacturers: Do you have an energy solution for… The Manufacturing Indaba is launching an Energy Solutions Pavilion providing companies who have an energy solution that can support manufacturers, an opportunity to showcase their products to the manufacturing industry. Manufacturing is an… more More on Volkswagen's new SUV, the T-Cross Volkswagen's new compact SUV is characterized by a striking design, spacious interior, digital cockpit, perfect connectivity and class-leading driver assistance systems The T-Cross meets the most stringent safety standards, achieving a five… more Communication of the board of directors on the findings of the joint RNBV audit Renault’s Board of Directors today reviewed the final findings of the Joint Audit Mission that was commissioned jointly with Nissan in respect of their jointly-owned subsidiary RNBV. These findings confirmed the existence of deficiencies within… more MasterTips: The latest cars DON’T drive themselves While the concept of autonomous cars is eagerly anticipated, we should also not fall for the hype surrounding semi-autonomous cars. Be very wary of allowing your conscious component of driving… more The new BMW M8 Coupe and BMW M8 Competition Coupe. The new BMW M8 Convertible and BMW M8… BMW M GmbH is embarking on a luxury-segment offensive with a quartet of new high-performance sports cars at the pinnacle of its model range. The new BMW M8 Coupe (fuel consumption combined: 10.6 – 10.5 l/100 km; CO2 emissions combined: 242 –… more Waste Becomes a Powerful Resource of Hope in Walmer AN innovative new bike was designed and built for a Walmer Township man who makes a living from selling waste. Khululekile "Wilson" Moko will soon swap his cumbersome make-shift cart for a uniquely designed, functional waste-bike which was… more Bridgestone announces resignation of CEO Bridgestone announces that its CEO, Gavin Young, will be leaving the company on 07 June 2019 to pursue other interests. Mr Young was appointed CEO in June 2016, and during his three-year tenure led a number of important initiatives to drive… more Volkswagen Kombi range updated with a Trendline Plus model The iconic Volkswagen Kombi is now available in a higher powered and well-spec'd family vehicle The Trendline Plus model features a host of exterior highlights and interior features Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles has expanded its popular people… more DENSO Delivers Key Technology to WaterBit’s Precision Irrigation Solution Agriculture among non-automotive sectors embracing DENSO’s sensor technology, Partnership helps the mobility supplier advance its commitment to sustainability DENSO, the world’s second largest mobility supplier, announced today its partnership… more Schneider Electric highlights workable solutions at Africa Automation Fair EcoStruxure offers workable automation results Delivering IIoT results Global experience available locally Schneider Electric will exhibit how the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) is creating new business models and reshaping the industrial… more MELBOURNE Airport PLANS FOR THE FUTURE WITH TECHNOLOGY transformation partner SITA Flexible, passenger-friendly technology to boost capacity Melbourne Airport today announced that it has chosen to extend its contract with leading technology partner SITA for flexible and passenger-friendly technology to ready the airport for… more Universal Partners powers possibilities with Ferrari A deal to supply electric motors for Ferrari’s first hybrid series production sports car, is exciting investors about companies in Universal Partners’ investment portfolio. YASA, the world’s leading manufacturer of axial-flux electric motors,… more Ford Fiesta Demonstrates the importance of ESC at Global NCAP Stop the Crash Event Stop The Crash South Africa show hosted by Global NCAP in partnership with the Automobile Association Campaign to advocate for the widespread demand and adoption of crash avoidance technologies for vehicles Ford supported the event with two… more Monthly MEYLE Performance Update 2019 FIA European Truck Racing Championship Successful season opening for Sascha Lenz at the FIA ETRC in Misano On May 23rd, the FIA European Truck Racing Championship started its 35th season in Misano, Italy. Also present: MAN pilot Sascha Lenz… more RFA calls for urgent action to secure safety of the trucking industry and its people The Road Freight Association (RFA) requests urgent intervention by the Minister of Police to secure the safety of our drivers, vehicles and premises. Since March 2018, a targeted attack on the freight industry has been orchestrated by the All… more AutoX and Value Logistics – a strategic partnership that shapes the future Bold Steps in Optimisation Optimisation is pursued in many aspects of logistics and supply chain operations and is reflected in the long-standing strategic partnership between automotive battery manufacturer AutoX, and Value Logistics. What… more At the wheel of the All-new Renault Clio: renewed comfort and enjoyment The Clio has been synonymous with versatility since the very first generation of cars, proving just as easy to drive in urban as in rural conditions, and the New Clio doesn't disappoint on that front. The New Clio offers drivers even greater… more Passenger Car Market Holds Up for Dealers in Exceptionally Tough May Month Overall Dealer sales channel for May 2019 – 35 506 new vehicles (passenger and commercial vehicles) sold on dealer floors in May 2019 (2018: 37 175 showing a -4.5% variance in sales on dealer floors compared to the same month last year)… more Naamsa comment on the May 2019 New Vehicle Sales Statistics The National Association of Automobile Manufacturers of South Africa [NAAMSA] said that new vehicle sales continued to disappoint into May, 2019 while export sales were also down for the first time this year. Reflecting on the new vehicle sales… more Argus Motors - Special for Jun & Jul 2019 Q20 - SUPER MULTI-PURPOSE LUBRICANT R41.50 No Minimum QTY (Price is after 6% settlement discount) Please find access to our June & July Special Offers. (Click here to download the full file) Please note: It is a big file and will take a few… more Selling cars smarter online The online second hand car market is booming. More than twice as many pre-owned vehicles are sold every month in SA than new ones. Gumtree Auto’s Nunben Dixon says that in this competitive space sellers need to learn how to stand out in the… more FAW Harrismith becomes full sales and service dealer FAW Harrismith, which opened on 4 March this year, is now a full FAW sales and service branch and part of the growing FAW South Africa dealer network. The Free State facility was previously an independent dealer that sold FAW vehicles, as well… more Should Africa Emulate Asian Manufacturing? Labels and product stamps across the world reveal the all too familiar imprints ‘Made in China’ or ‘Made in Japan’. There is no question that Africa as a developing continent, is rich with endless opportunity. This begs the question; how should… more New challenges await competitors as the Toyota 1000 desert race relocates to Eastern… The South African National Cross Country Series (SACCS) will reach the halfway mark of the 2019 season with the annual Toyota 1000 Desert Race (TDR 1000) in Botswana and this year another angle will be added to the challenge when this marathon… more 2019 DRIVEN Racing Oil catalog is now available The 2019 edition of the DRIVEN Racing Oil catalog is now available. The Driven Racing Oil brand was originally created to advance engine and driveline lubricant performance in professional racing. Today DRIVEN’s innovations extend beyond the… more Upcoming Events - June 2019 INTERNATIONAL EVENTS 01.06.2019 FIM RED BULL ROOKIES CUP, MUGELLO 02.06.2019 FIM CIRCUIT RACING GRAND PRIX, MUGELLO 07.06.2019 FIM TRIAL WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP, MOTEGI 07.06.2019 FIM WORLD SUPERBIKE & SUPERSPORT CHAMPIONSHIP, CIRCUITO DE JEREZ… more Preventative maintenance: the key to sustainability The significance of preventative maintenance in the capital equipment equation cannot be reiterated enough. Benefits abound and include operator and machine safety, machine efficiency and time savings, among others. All these point towards one… more Cummins AME introduces digital solutions to maximise vehicle uptime There is a growing demand in the Africa and Middle East (AME) region for remote monitoring solutions from Cummins due to the increased prevalence of electronic engines that adhere to the latest international standards, according to Cummins AME… more Lotus to reveal Type 130 All-Electric Hypercar in London on 16 July 2019 World’s first British all-electric hypercar – project code Type 130 – will be revealed in London, the birthplace of the brand, in July A maximum of just 130 examples will be available to own, with first customer deliveries to commence in 2020… more Fat Tracks MTB Club Donates Malcolm Lange's Race-Winning Bike to Continental Tyre SA The oldest mountain bike club in SA, Fat Tracks, has donated Lange's locally designed and developed Raleigh RC9000 series to Continental Tyre South Africa Multiple champion Lange won 409 local and international races during his 20-year career… more Hyundai Creta range gets a flashy new flagship derivative Hyundai's Creta range, which has been a stalwart in the brand's local model line-up, has grown with the addition of a flagship derivative with several attractive styling cues that sets it apart from its siblings. Only 500 of the special Cretas… more African Advanced Manufacturing and Composites Show - New Exhibitors Click here to book your paticipation more Goodyear South Africa's continued commitment to employees' overall wellness On Tuesday, May 28 Goodyear South Africa reached another milestone on its journey to improve employee wellness when the multinational company revealed the recently upgraded on-site canteen at the manufacturing facility in Uitenhage. The ribbon… more The Carbon Tax Act is here – what motorists should be doing As of 1 June, the Carbon Tax Act and the Customs and Excise Amendment Act will be effective. The Customs and Excise Amendment Act primarily deals with administrative issues surrounding the implementation of the new carbon tax. So, what does… more EV Future \| E-Mobility \| Indaba - Event Postponed!! It is with great regret that the E-Mobility Indaba has to be postponed to March 2020. This decision was made due to market and industry related forces that are out of the organisational team’s control. The success of this event is of utmost… more Technology lends a helping hand to special needs schools MiX Telematics, in partnership with iSchoolAfrica, continues its commitment to empower teachers and learners with classroom practices and educational technology that assist learners to overcome some of their learning difficulties. MiX… more What to look forward to at Manufacturing Indaba 2019 This year’s symposium promises to raise the bar by hosting an official Buyers Lounge programme with buyers from across Africa representing Procurement Managers, Municipal Managers and Company Buyers from the large corporates in attendance. The… more Should you be putting 95 or 93 Octane petrol in your car? There is much debate around whether 95 Octane petrol is an essential to get the best performance out of your car and to avoid unnecessary wear and tear. “This is a question that often pops up in the industry,” says Jakkie Olivier, CEO of the… more Students Develop Innovative Designs for Isuzu Finding innovative solutions in the manufacturing environment is one of the key objectives of Isuzu Motors South Africa's sponsorship of the Nelson Mandela University (NMU) Chair in Mechatronics. The Chair in Mechatronics, headed by Professor… more May 30, 2019 Motorsport PE’s finest set to thrill home crowd on 15 June Port Elizabeth fans are set for a midwinter race feast when the South African national championship Extreme Circus comes to town for its annual visit to Aldo Scribante Saturday 15 June. In what’s set to be a celebration of EP racing success,… more May 30, 2019 Buzz Minimum Wage: A crime against the poor The National Minimum Wage (NMW) is a crime against the poor of this country as it absolutely forbids them from accepting any compensation below the floor set by government. It is reasonable, therefore, to assume that some people who could be… more May 30, 2019 Motoring The first-ever BMW X7 now available in South Africa BMW has pulled back the covers on a new definition of automotive luxury. The BMW X7 blends lavish presence, exclusivity and spaciousness with the versatile and agile driving properties customers would expect from a Sports Activity Vehicle… more May 30, 2019 Mobilty Beat #StopTheCrash campaign for car and motorcycle safety launches in South Africa For the first time in Africa, the #StopTheCrash Partnership hosts live demonstrations of crash avoidance technologies in support of the United Nations Global Goals and the Decade of Action for Road Safety. Launched at the Kyalami Grand Prix… more Four star progress but poor child protection a disappointment in latest… Global NCAP and the Automobile Association of South Africa launch the third round of #SaferCarsForAfrica crash test results today with the welcome support of the FIA Foundation and Bloomberg Philanthropies. The three models tested show… more Winch for Farming, Hunting, Quad Biking, UTV and 4X4 A small, compact, low-cost winch, suitable for applications such as farming, quad biking, hunting and UTV, is now available in South Africa. “The Superwinch A3500 is a compact, quiet, all-purpose 3500lb (1590kg) winch also ideal for 4x4… more Growing truck sales bode well for Futuroad Expo The market in South Africa for medium, heavy, and extra-heavy trucks is showing positive growth in the first four months of 2019, which bodes well for interest in the biennial Futuroad Expo. This African commercial vehicle exhibition will be… more Visitor registration opens for Automechanika Johannesburg Visitor registration has opened for this year's Automechanika Johannesburg trade fair for the automotive aftermarket, which will take place at the Expo Centre, Nasrec, from 18-21 September. Free visitor passes are available online from… more Opinion piece: Can Electric Vehicles go the distance in South Africa? The ever-increasing fuel price is one of many factors making electric vehicles an attractive option. Another one is their ever-growing availability, as more car manufacturers produce their own version of the economic, green vehicles. However,… more MasterDrive Newsletter - 28 May 2019 MasterTips: The benefits of adaptive headlights A recent study suggests that adaptive headlights increase roadway lighting by as much as 86%. The same study also says that there are considerable differences between the brightness of headlights… more Ford Pays Homage to Le Mans with Celebration Liveries Special series of liveries celebrates Ford's success at Le Mans, past and present Celebration liveries mark Ford's "Au Revoir" ("until we meet again") to its factory Le Mans programme Customer team, Keating Motorsports follows same livery… more FCA What's Behind - Episode 2: Cars Undergo Extreme Heat Testing in South Africa The second episode of FCA's unique project, which reveals the work carried out behind the scenes to produce the high quality, safety, reliability and comfort standards of each model, is on air. After the success of the trailer and the first… more Teo Martin Motorsport takes maiden European win for the McLaren 720S GT3 in Germany McLaren 720S GT3 scores first European and international championship win with McLaren Customer Racing team Teo Martin Motorsport McLaren Young Professional Martin Kodric and teammate Henrique Chaves currently in 3rd place in the International… more Value for money, service levels impress PA Stemmet Vervoer Boksburg’s PA Stemmet Vervoer started out in 1996, focusing on hazardous goods transportation. Today it provides transport services for all goods - except livestock and furniture - in and around the Gauteng, North West, Mpumalanga, Free state,… more Industry 4.0 Solutions \| Is your company future proof? More Here more Join these leading organisations exhibiting at the Manufacturing Indaba Exhibition 2019 Have you booked your exhibition stand to showcase your products and services? The exhibition provides a platform for manufacturing companies to showcase their expertise and network with an industry relevant audience of decision makers. By… more Khazimla - Inkanyezi Quarterly Newsletter Mixed picture for fuel price Variable international oil prices, and an equally unpredictable Rand/US dollar exchange rate, have combined to provide a mixed picture for fuel prices in June. This is according to an Automobile Association (AA), quoting unaudited month-end… more The future of work creating franchising opportunities Could the movement currently shaping the future of work also be the future of franchising? The demand for flexible workspace across the world has seen record growth in the last few years, with flexible working spaces set to grow up to 30%… more Opel is Life! And the Awards don't stop! Opel Combo Life is 'Best Buy Car of Europe 2019' Firstly Opel gave you the Award-Winning Combo Cargo Van - the perfect fleet vehicle which satisfies both Return on Investment (ROI) plus Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) in its solution. And now we… more Discretionary SETA grants funding windows open Dear employer All companies who submitted their Workplace Skills Plan for the 2020 year, prior to the April deadline, are eligible to apply for discretionary funding at their respective SETAs. Discretionary funding is additional, merit based… more Mozambican transport specialist Lalgy Transport streamlines logistics across its fleet… MiX Telematics, a leading global provider of fleet and mobile asset management solutions, today announced that it will provide Lalgy Transports, a company that operates throughout the Mozambique territory and surrounding countries, with a… more Tightening procedures in screwdriving technology The reliable assembly of fasteners Screwdriving technology is the key to numerous assembly tasks. Screw fastenings are popular due to their resilience, part reusability and because of the option of undoing the connection at any time without… more Mitsubishi Motors Eclipse Cross wins a string of prestigious awards in Russia Mitsubishi Motors Corporation (MMC) announced that the Eclipse Cross has added to its collection of international awards with three more prizes from Russia, where the compact SUV was recently launched. The first was at the national "Car of the… more Four rings launch online sales of new cars with Audi TT Quantum Gray Edition Audi takes e-commerce to the next level. Beginning June 5, 2019, consumers will be able to purchase new cars directly online. The first model to be sold exclusively over this sales channel is the Audi TT Quantum Gray Edition. Customers can… more Digitalization: PEMA and Continental Optimize Tire Management for Entire Fleet PEMA successfully controls tire management via a digital system developed by Continental Increased transparency helps to reduce downtime and maximize service life Commercial vehicle rental company PEMA, which operates in many European… more Groupe Renault confirms receipt of a proposal from FCA regarding a potential 50/50 merger… Groupe Renault confirms that it received a proposal from FCA (Fiat Chrysler Automobiles) regarding a potential 50/50 merger transaction between Groupe Renault and FCA. Renault’s Board of Directors will meet this morning to discuss this… more The all-new BMW 1 Series - The perfect synthesis of agility and space The arrival of the all-new BMW 1 Series heralds the dawn of a new era. The third generation of the successful premium compact model draws back the curtain on the new BMW front-wheel-drive architecture, which fuses BMW’s signature driving… more Williams Hunt PE 2019 Tuna Classic - Results AND THE WINNER IS: 2019 Tuna Classic Tournament winner Marcel De Lauwere is congratulated by tournament sponsor Trevor Villet, Dealer Principal of Williams Hunt Port Elizabeth andPort Elizabeth Deep Sea Angling Club (PEDSAC) Tournament… more The fight against rhino poaching continues Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles continues to support Wilderness Foundation Africa in the ongoing fight against rhino poaching Since the start of the partnership in 2011, the sponsored Volkswagen Amaroks have driven more than one million… more Williams Hunt PE 2019 Tuna Classic WHAT A WHOPPER: The first day [Thursday, 23 May] of the Williams Hunt PE 2019 Tuna Classic hosted at the Port Elizabeth Harbour was a huge success, with plenty of big ones being weighed in. The winners of the tournament will be announced… more Hyundai's popular H-1 Bus can now carry 12 people One of the market segment leaders in Hyundai Automotive SA's model range - the popular H-1 Bus - has been given an extra row of seats that expands its carrying capacity to that of a 12-seater. The H-1 Elite Bus, which received a bold new face… more BMW builds the best hybrid: International Engine of the Year award For the fifth year in a row the winner of the International Engine + Powertrain of the Year award in its class is the powertrain of the BMW i8. This year it was competing in a brand new category: Best Hybrid Powertrain. A big surprise was the… more The SA Bound Next-Generation 2019 Mazda3 Achieves 5 Star Euro NCAP Rating The Next-Generation Mazda3 has been awarded the maximum five-star rating by Euro NCAP in its latest series of tests. Soon to be launched in South Africa, the 2019 Mazda3 follows the Mazda6 as the second Mazda to achieve an overall five-star… more Record-breaking Fiat 500X: the 500 thousandth unit is produced The 500X crossover has led its segment in Italy and been permanently in the European top 10 ever since 2014. The record was set at the FCA plant at Melfi, one of the world's most innovative automotive factories and a genuine best-in-class. The… more Mitsubishi Outlander Phev bolts past 200 000 Mitsubishi Motors Corporation (MMC), the parent company of Mitsubishi Motors South Africa, achieved a momentous breakthrough when the Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV, the world's first plug-in hybrid SUV, sparked past the 200 000 worldwide sales mark… more Track facts and key factors: the BMW i Andretti Motorsport preview for the BMW i Berlin… The ABB FIA Formula E Championship is in Berlin (GER) this weekend for round ten of the season. BMW i is the title partner of BMW i Andretti Motorsport’s home race again. In this preview, we present the most important facts on the circuit and… more Durable lithium-ion batteries are the future With ever increasing living costs and a slow economy, you count every cent, there’s no better time for motorcyclists to invest in a lithium-ion battery. As technology advances, lithium-ion batteries have been designed in such a way they can now… more African Advanced Manufacturing and Composites Show - Early Bird Benefits Click Here for more information about the show more Continental Assists SOS Children's Village after Devastating Cyclone Idai Continental Tyre SA has donated R25 000 to SOS Children's Village for disaster relief efforts in Mozambique Continental AG supports programme with an additional 25 000 Euro (over R400 000) donation Approximately 260 000 children and over… more Transformation and professional supply chain designations top the agenda of new SAPICS… Having served as a director of SAPICS for five years, Mpane asserts that she has the experience, energy and determination to propel the association into a new era of professionalism and transformation. Supply chain management is increasingly… more Honda Motor Southern Africa Annual Excellence Awards 2018/2019 Honda Motor Southern Africa held its Dealer Excellence Awards on Friday May 17, 2019 at Emperors Palace in Johannesburg. The annual gala event honours the outstanding performance of automobile and motorcycle dealerships nationwide. Honda's most… more Legend runner and Haval take over Pelindaba This past weekend saw the area of Pelindaba known more for the nuclear power plant and the exquisite rocky outcrops as well as its picturesque beauty come alive with amateur athletes from all ages taking on the The LEGENDRUNNER event. Legend… more On the road to professionalising the motor sector The Retail Motor Industry Organisation (RMI), which represents 7 500 member businesses in the motor sector in South Africa, is pushing hard to transform the organisation into a professional body. Jakkie Olivier, RMI CEO says the role that… more Opel Astra Sport 1.6T - now in Automatic! The Award-winning Opel Astra has a new derivative! Unitrans Opel Distributor is proud to have introduced the Astra Sport 1.6T in Automatic. This model includes the OPC-Line Pack inside and out, PLUS an optional sunroof so often desired by Sport… more Bentley, Lamborghini, Jaguar: Top 9: Das sind die coolsten Autos der 1990er-Jahre Vom BMW Z1 über den Audi V8 bis zum Lamborghini Diablo – wir zeigen Ihnen neun Autos aus den 1990er-Jahren, die Sie einfach kennen müssen. Eine Mauer fiel, ein Telefon passte fast in die Westentasche und der Turbolader machte eine Pause, damit… more WBX automates weighbridge process with complete logistics solution From weighbridge to driver and inventory management and access and identification, WBX offers its customers a complete logistics solution. The holistic suite from WBX represents the next generation of receiving and dispatch software, with… more 1 MONTH TO GO: Reasons to attend Manufacturing Indaba Join us at this year's Manufacturing Indaba for unrivalled opportunities in networking, learning, and discovery. Learn about the the role of Industry 4.0 to accelerate change, the importance of improving efficiency and productivity in… more Ford 1.0-litre EcoBoost Wins 11th IEPOTY Engine 'Oscar'; Powered 1 in 4 Ford Vehicles… Ford 1.0-litre EcoBoost enhanced with industry-first cylinder deactivation adds 2019 Sub-150 PS category win to list of 11 International Engine and Powertrain of the Year awards Fuel-efficient three-cylinder petrol engine with up to 140 PS… more “International Engine of the Year” Awards: Audi’s 2.0 TFSI engine wins in its class Huge success for Audi in the important category of engines with between 150 and 250 metric horsepower Hans-Joachim Rothenpieler, Member of the Board of Management of Audi AG for Technical Development:“The versatile 2.0 TFSI is a drive that we… more MiX Telematics supplies a Ugandan utility provider with a fleet management solution MiX Telematics, a leading global provider of fleet and mobile asset management solutions, is proud to announce that its channel partner in East Africa, A&S Electronics Limited, has been awarded a tender to supply a water services provider in… more Mahindra launches the new Bold and Dynamic XUV300 Mahindra has entered the next phase of its evolution with the launch of the bold and dynamic Mahindra XUV300. Built on the group's global X100 platform, the XUV300 (pronounced XUV three double O) carries its larger sibling's cheetah-inspired… more 300 times Kimi 300. Few drivers in the history of Formula One have ever reached such heady heights in terms of race entries, and next weekend will mark this important milestone for our very own Kimi Räikkönen. Yes, he had to be told. "DRIVING IS THE ONLY… more 5 stars at the EURO-NCAP tests for the all-new Renault Clio; the best of safety for all The All-new Renault Clio gets the coveted 5-stars rating in the Euro NCAP safety tests. Groupe Renault’s best-seller has been tested according to its new stringent protocol launched in 2018 and won the highest score with results at the best… more Osidon is revolutionising accounting but SARS might not be able to keep up The IT Accountant group, Osidon, says while they are revolutionizing accounting by pushing the boundaries and rethinking traditional methods, the South African Revenue Service (SARS) might not be able to keep up. Earlier this month, Osidon… more Africa's Largest Industry 4.0 Showcase Register Now - Only 12 Days left to Africa Automation Fair Endorsed by: Organised by: more MasterTips: Drowsy driving Drowsy driving is dangerous driving. Studies show approximately 20% of all accidents are due to drowsy driving. Moreover, 41% of drivers admitted to falling asleep behind the wheel. MasterTest: Sam says it ditched the… more Cuba is no example to follow Venezuela is proof of the miraculous impact of socialism. They took a prosperous nation and destroyed it almost overnight. That’s a problem for that other socialist paradise—Cuba. Cuba relies on aid from Venezuela to put food on the shelves.… more After 35 years, Pioneering BRAND Midas is still SA’s ‘go-to’ automotive and accessories… It wasn’t that long ago, comparatively speaking, that a motorist looking for vehicle parts would brace themselves for a journey into the rougher parts of town, look for a small, dusty storefront and then negotiate prices with a person… more Sting and Shaggy "launch" the new top-of-range 500 Star and 500 Rockstar from space The advert dedicated to the Star and the Rockstar, the top-of-the-range versions of the new 500 line-up, is on-air featuring two iconic musicians Sting and Shaggy. (YouTube link) Their single Just One Lifetime, off their Grammy Award winning… more Workshops battle with abandoned cars issue Cars left abandoned at repair workshops are an inconvenience workshop owners face around the country. Dewald Ranft, Chairman of the Motor Industry Workshop Association (MIWA), a proud association of the Retail Motor Industry Organisation (RMI),… more Renault Sandero range challenges the status quo with the launch of the new Sandero… New SANDERO STEPWAY PLUS model delivers on the value for money Stepway proposition PLUS much more in the form of bespoke design and feature enhancements, with the added benefit of Smartphone Mirroring with Apple CarPlay and Android Auto… more Winter Is Coming: 10 tips for preparing your car and driving safely this winter Ford's state-of-the-art weather chambers simulate most extreme weather conditions to ensure vehicles can handle it all - arctic frost, desert heat, rainforest humidity Drivers need to be aware of how conditions in snow or ice zones affect the… more Dakar to Baja, Check Out These Six Off-Roading Meccas Around the World Sports Utility Vehicles are the world’s most popular type of car amongst consumers, and 2018 saw 30 million of them sold across the world giving them 36.4% of the entire global market share. Yet despite their popularity, a large number of SUVs… more New Volkswagen Group packaging centre opens Imperial Logistics has formally opened the new Volkswagen Group packaging centre which it is managing and operating at JadeWeserPort, Wilhelmshaven (Germany). The 40,000 sq. m facility took 9 months to complete. Around 200 representatives of… more Standowin iQ Cloud networks digital colour management Colour management is reliable, fast, efficient - and now completely wireless - with the new Standowin iQ Cloud. Standox, the refinish paint brand from Wuppertal, Germany, supports professional bodyshops with three different packages of… more Register now to hear our high profile speakers on 25-26 June 2019 at Manufacturing Indaba Meet some of our high profile speakers who will participate in discussions at the upcoming Manufacturing Indaba Conference See many more confirmed speakers LEARN MORE: manufacturingindaba.co.za / ENQUIRIES: info@manufacturingindaba.co.za more Stop government from taking your property Speaking at the Goldman Sachs investor conference on Wednesday, President Ramaphosa attempted to address investors’ concerns regarding expropriation of property without compensation (EWC). He has repeatedly said that EWC will happen, while also… more BMW South Africa model update measures from July 2019 BMW South Africa will be injecting some of its models with added variety and appeal from July 2019: BMW X2 with more standard equipment and new options – New optional extras, exterior paint finishes, leather variants and interior trim strips… more Volkswagen's top dealers awarded at annual ceremony Best dealers awarded at Volkswagen South Africa's Grand Prix Awards ceremony Hatfield VW Braamfontein wins Dealer of the Year Award Volkswagen dealer network accounted for 70% of 2018 total sales Johannesburg - Each year, the best of the best… more World Championship of Motorsport returns to the Mother City! Early Bird Special! It's back. It's bad. It's the best battling it out for glory. It's the FIA World Rallycross Championship presented by Monster Energy, and when it hits Cape Town again this summer, it's going to turn the place on its head. The mother city is… more Continental Becomes Official Tyre Sponsor of Total Africa Cup of Nations Until 2023 Five-year agreement signed between Continental and the Confédération Africaine de Football (CAF) to sponsor the tournament including the 2019 edition in Egypt Sponsorship designed to increase awareness of the premium Continental tyre brand… more Ford South Africa's Growth Strategy Targets Crucial Exports Automotive manufacturing holds immense potential for job creation and economic growth in SA Expansion of export programmes is key to sustainability of local auto industry Two-thirds of Ford SA's total vehicle production is exported to 148… more Alfa Romeo triumphs at the 1000 Miglia 2019: 1st and 2nd! After 1,794.07 kilometres, this year's edition will be remembered as another demonstration of the deep bond between the "Red Arrow Race" and the brand which continues to add to its legendary deeds. Giovanni Moceri and Daniele Bonetti won the… more Demos are defos worth considering South African car buyers are very keen on demo vehicles. The latest Transunion data shows that 10% of financed used car purchases in SA in Q1 2019 were for demonstration models. Jeff Osborne of Gumtree Autos says demos – vehicles which have… more Allied Steelrode’s steel processing technology ‘drives’ optimised efficiencies within… The local automotive industry is one of the most critical manufacturing sectors in the country, with vehicle and related component production accounting for approximately one third of South Africa's manufacturing output. Total earnings from… more New Scénic and New Grand Scénic BLACK EDITION: comfort, refinement and sporting… High-end limited edition based on the INTENS finish On show across the French sales network during the open days on June 13 and 16, 2019 Prices start at €33,100 for Scénic and €33,700 for Grand Scénic Renault is taking orders in France for a… more With virtual reality into the electric era: Audi makes technicians worldwide fit for the… Innovative training methods for working with complex battery technology Digital modular solution allows efficient use of VR and AR training Markus Siebrecht, Head of After Sales: “Transformation towards digitalization and electric mobility… more African Advanced Manufacturing and Composites Show - Trade Development Activities The African Advanced Manufacturing and Composites Show (AAMCS) is Africa’s most comprehensive and dynamic trading and networking platform for technology, products and services in Advanced Manufacturing. It brings together, under one roof,… more SEMA Industry Indicators: U.S. Economic News Extremely Positive, but Trade Uncertainty… The economic news over the past month has been extremely positive, especially in the face of an economy that had appeared to be slowing recently. Initial estimates for first-quarter GDP growth was 3.2%, suggesting significantly faster growth… more MEYLE spare parts: „From Race Track to Road“ With professional data analysis for the development of new parts MEYLE-PD brake pads developed and tested in Truck Racing Control arm prototype for the perfect drift All MEYLE motorsport cooperations focus on the transfer of know-how. The… more MEYLE Performance: the 2019 Motorsport Season T3 Motorsport GmbH Together with MEYLE as a sponsor, T3 Motorsport will start with an Audi R8 LMS GT3 for the first time in the "League of Super Sports Cars". The partnership goes far beyond pure sponsoring: MEYLE engineers will support the… more DENSO Shows Commitment to STEM Education as Lead Sponsor of the 20th Robofest World… Mobility supplier supports event to engage and excite the automotive workforce of tomorrow about future careers in technology and engineering DENSO, the world’s second largest mobility supplier, is a lead sponsor of the 20th Robofest World… more Instant friction for faster bedding-in Safeline has taken brake pad manufacture in South Africa a step forward with the introduction of a surface layer that provides instant friction for faster brake pad bedding-in. This will improve the process of bedding-in the brake pad with the… more Congratulations SA taxpayers - you've paid government. Now what you earn is yours! Tax Freedom Day was - Saturday, 18 May Before you earn a cent, government takes a chunk out of your pay packet in taxes. This Saturday, 18 May, marks Tax Freedom Day 2019 - the day from when the money you earn belongs to you to fund your and… more A showcase of South Africa's manufacturing capabilities 21 May - 23 May 2019 \| 9am - 5pm Johannesburg Expo Centre The Local Manufacturing Expo will showcase South Africa's manufacturing capabilities across a wide variety of industry sectors. Providing an interactive, educational and practical… more Alfa Romeo passion at fever pitch: the 2019 1000 Miglia is under way The 1000 Miglia has just set off from Brescia: at the head of the group the 1954 Alfa Romeo 1900 Sport Spider, the event's official Guest Car with race number 1000. Also at the start was Antonio Giovinazzi, the young "Alfa Romeo Racing” team… more Haval Motor South Africa proudly exhibits their latest offering at Grain SA's NAMPO… Annually South Africa’s agricultural community makes their pilgrimage to Bothaville a small town in the Free State province of South Africa to attend the ever popular Nampo Harvest Festival. Haval Motor Southern Africa once again teamed up with… more Mahindra challenges Survivor viewers to find their favourite Survivor South Africa’s seventh season premiered on 16 May on M-Net and while it may be too early to pick a favourite contestant, the viewers and contestants have already picked their favourite vehicle. Mahindra South Africa this week announced… more Innovative Transit Smart Energy Concept is Helping Ford Find New Ways to Go Further in… Ford develops battery-electric Transit Smart Energy Concept to trial technologies which could help maximise driving range of future electrified vehicles Heat pump innovation saves 20 per cent of driving range. Smart device activated power door,… more Postcards of Italian beauty in a race between past and future Today, the unbreakable bond with Alfa Romeo's unique heritage is expressed in the newOchre paintwork of Alfa Romeo Giulia: the modern reinterpretation of a historic colour. Yet another way of renewing the Alfa Romeo legend on the roads of the… more 5 Signs You May Be Ready For A Rebrand From Absa to the SABC and this week, John Deere SSA’s rebranding - we often see the need for and impact of established brands choosing to differentiate themselves with a new brand name, visual identity, positioning and vision. Whether it’s to… more Nelson Mandela Bay to host African 4IR tradeshow Nelson Mandela Bay has been confirmed as the host city of the second African Advanced Manufacturing and Composites Show. The Show, according to organisers, represents the largest gathering of Fourth Industrial Revolution roleplayers in Southern… more Unemployment blight can be alleviated with the correct remedy Stats SA recently announced South Africa’s unemployment rate has increased to 27.6%. The expanded rate increased to 38%, which translates to 9,994,000 unemployed people. It’s a wonder that SA’s unemployment rate isn’t above 45% at this point -… more Fuel price see-saw as Rand, oil face off Fuel data for May is showing a listless fuel price picture. This is according to the Automobile Association (AA) which quotes unaudited mid-month fuel price data released by the Central Energy Fund. "The overall picture is of little change,"… more Recycling used oil - fueling the economy and protecting the environment 350 million litres of new lubricant oil is sold in South Africa every year. This new oil is a combination of locally manufactured, as well as imported lubes. Of all the oil that is sold, approximately150 million litres becomes used oil, of… more Zimbabwean Minister visits Isuzu in Port Elizabeth First Zimbabwean dignitary to visit Isuzu Motors South Africa; Zimbabwe accounts for approximately 27% of Isuzu's African exports; Isuzu has been present in Zimbabwe for more than 30 years. ON the back of an excellent year of Isuzu bakkie sales… more Invitation to meet potential buyers at Manufacturing Indaba Manufacturing Indaba is launching an exclusive Hosted Buyer Campaign to attract Buyers to attend and purchase your products and / or services at the exhibition. The show will benefit from our established and researched network of senior buyers… more onPeak returns as official SEMA Show housing provider Average four-night stay results in more than $450 in savings SEMA is partnering once again with onPeak to provide SEMA Showgoers with convenient, affordable and reliable housing options for the 2019 SEMA Show. Available through… more Strong performance in a new look: MEYLE-HD control arm kit for BMW and Mini Technically improved MEYLE-HD control arm for BMW and MINI Forged aluminium control arms for long life, reduced weight and improved corrosion resistance Ready for installation: complete kit with two control arms, MEYLE-HD bushings and all… more Automechanika launches Body & Paint World Championships Automechanika is holding the first international Body & Paint competition in the exhibition’s history in association with DeBeer Refinish, Octoral and SATA. Bodyshop professionals will be competing against one another at six Automechanika shows… more Argus Motors Special for May & Jun 2019 Fram All-In-One Filter Kits Click here to view list Top Selling Items - Don't get caught without these items in stock Click here to view list Please find access to our May & June Special Offers. (Click here to download the full file) Please… more Mahindra showcases full product range at NAMPO Range of automotive products - Pik Ups and SUVs Showcasing the New Special Edition Mahindra Pik Up S6 SC Kalahari, among others India's most fuel efficient TLB and the versatile Motor Grader on display The ultra-silent Mahindra Powerol diesel… more Loeb ends on podium for Hyundai in Rally Chile Hyundai Motorsport has scored its sixth individual podium result of the 2019 FIA World Rally Championship (WRC) with Sébastien Loeb and co-driver Daniel Elena claiming third position after an exciting battle with Sébastien Ogier. Loeb's first… more Ford Ranger Raptor - Birth of a New Breed First-ever Ford Ranger Raptor delivers true Ford Performance DNA Exceptional off-road capabilities that sets a completely new benchmark for the pickup segment Muscular exterior styling with 283mm ground clearance and 150mm wider track Unique… more Business Owner - Attend Entrepreneurs Indaba - Sat 25 May - Cape Town Cape Town: Sat 25 May 2019 - Garden Court Nelson Mandela Blvd, Woodstock Time: 9am to 6pm As business owner and entrepreneur, you are invited to attend the Entrepreneurs Indaba in Cape Town. This full-day business growth conference and… more MasterTips: Risky drivers compound bad behavior Drivers who engage in risky behavior are often found engaging in other risky behaviors at the same time, according to new data released by a US provider of video telematics, analytics and safety… more Audi networks with traffic lights in Europe “Stop-and-go traffic in cities is annoying. By contrast, we are pleased when we have a “green wave” – but we catch them far too seldom, unfortunately. With the Traffic Light Information function, drivers are more in control. They drive more… more Meet the highest mileage electric vehicle in Africa BMW i3 owner Shaun Maidment has owned his first generation 60Ah BMW i3 since August 2016. Just under three years later, Maidment now has the added distinction of having reached the 200 000km milestone in his BMW i3, to make his the… more MiX Telematics delivers solid business growth with strong fiscal 2019 results MiX Telematics Limited (NYSE: MIXT, JSE: MIX), a leading global provider of fleet and mobile asset management solutions delivered as Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), today announced financial results for its fourth quarter and for its full fiscal… more Replace or repair? That is the windscreen question It’s what many car owners dread, that pinging sound as a stone flicks up off the road or bounces off the back of a truck and hits your windscreen. What starts as a small chip quickly becomes a crack making its way further and further across the… more Gearing up for SAMBRA 2019 Conference and Expo Plans are on track for the 2019 South African Motor Body Repairers’ Association (SAMBRA) Conference and Exhibition which will take place between 17 – 19 October at Emperors Palace in Johannesburg. This year we will be including an extra day… more Opinion Piece: The 2019-election is behind us - now let’s get down to work I believe the President when he says he wants to fix South Africa; I do not doubt his sincerity. The challenges that the President faces in order to execute what he deems necessary to achieve, cannot be underestimated. Within the context of the… more Goodyear pushes the limit with new race-inspired Eagle F1 SuperSport range for road and… Three-tier range comprising SuperSport, SuperSport R and SuperSport RS Innovative technologies enable significant improvements to braking distances and lap times Caters to growing Ultra Ultra High Performance (UUHP) segment, with 31 SKUs… more Shell Helix - Understanding the label Understanding the label - What’s in an oil? As the invisible partner enabling us on life’s journeys; do we truly understand what the differences in the various oils are, what the labels on our oil cans mean, and what exactly they do for our… more South African credit card owners offered crucial monthly relief A new digital player is changing the face of South African Credit Life Insurance - and putting money back into the pockets of credit card holders in the process… Credit cards are an increasingly important financial tool for South Africans. They… more Is the Manufacturing Sector ready for Generation Z? Governmental bodies and manufacturing stakeholders need to invest in Generation Z industrialists who are ultimately set to lead the continent’s manufacturing sector. - Who is Generation Z? Africa is considered by many industry experts to be… more Comprehensive Tata and Daewoo Truck ranges on show at Nampo Tata Automobile Corporation SA (TACSA) is honoured to be part of the greatest Agricultural showcase in South Africa. For the past 11 years we have showcased our range of commercial vehicles in Bothaville and this year is no exception. This year… more Groupe Renault and Klépierre sign an original partnership for innovative mobility… In the run up to VivaTech, Klépierre, the pan-European leader in shopping malls, and Groupe Renault, the European leader in electric and shared mobility, announce a long-term partnership combining their strengths to offer innovative mobility… more SA’s second hand car market – the big trends In spite of small uptick in April, the SA new car market remains on the back foot. Industry association NAAMSA hailed a very welcome 3,9% year-on-year increase in passenger vehicle sales in April 2019 but the year-to-date sector statistics are… more 5 reasons motorcyclists should consider switching to lithium-ion batteries Durable lithium-ion batteries are the future With ever increasing living costs and a slow economy, you count every cent, there’s no better time for motorcyclists to invest in a lithium-ion battery. As technology advances, lithium-ion batteries… more Renault, official partner of the 2019 Cannes Film Festival Renault is partnering the world-famous Cannes Film Festival for the 36th consecutive year since 1983. The special relationship illustrates Renault’s commitment to the cinema for over 120 years. With a jury chaired by Mexican filmmaker Alejandro… more The new BMW 8 Series Convertible available in South Africa BMW is forging ahead with its model offensive in the luxury segment in South Africa with the presentation of an open-top sports car which explores the highest reaches of dynamic flair, emotionality and exclusivity. The new BMW 8 Series… more Tata proves its worth With more than 1,1-million kilometres on its odometer, a Tata 8 tonne dropside that’s used as a maximum-load workhorse is well into its second decade of delivering exceptional service for Meyerton-based animal feedstock manufacturer,… more Mobile Bank – Serco’s latest achievement in construction of events vehicles! Serco has seen growing demand for its custom designed events vehicles with the latest initiative being a mobile bank to be used as a back-up or disaster relief unit in emergencies. The vehicle was ordered by a prominent bank for use in a… more Skills Development Initiative INSETA REGISTERED COMPANIES IMPORTANT REMINDER WORKPLACE SKILLS PLAN and ANNUAL TRAINING REPORT DEADLINE EXTENDED Contact us to assist you with these services. Dear employer According to the Skills Development Act 97/1998 and the National… more Aston Martin Rapide E delivers dynamic debut on streets of Monaco Aston Martin Rapide E delivers dynamic debut ahead of Formula E Monaco ePrix Aston Martin works driver and 24 Hours of Le Mans winner Darren Turner took the wheel of Aston Martin’s first all-electric production car European premiere following… more The best of the best to take on one another at the Berg 400 cross country event The best of the best in the Production Vehicle category of the South African National Cross Country Series (SACCS) are ready and eager to do battle at the Berg 400 on May 17 and 18. With the first points on the scoreboard after the Mpumalanga… more Trucking industry firing on all cylinders It seems like the South African commercial vehicle industry is firing on all the cylinders, with another growth month recorded in April 2019. This is according to the latest combined year-to-date results released by the National Association of… more Apply for your free stand at Automechanika Jhb through the DTI Secure your FREE STAND at Automechanika Johannesburg and invite your sub-Saharan clients to visit at no cost to them! Messe Frankfurt South Africa is proud to announce that the DTI has booked a pavilion at Automechanika Johannesburg and… more All-new Triton tough enough for Nampo 2019 Nampo, the biggest agricultural show in the southern hemisphere, shares a not-so-surprising characteristic with the latest version of Mitsubishi Motors South Africa's "Engineered Beyond Tough" 2019 Triton. Engineered to be tough enough for… more CAPAS 2019 brings upgraded Accessories & Customising zone The sixth edition of the Chengdu International Trade Fair for Automotive Parts and Aftermarket Services (CAPAS) is set to host around 600 exhibitors from 23 to 25 May 2019. The fair will cover 45,000 sqm of exhibition space at the Chengdu… more African Advanced Manufacturing and Composites Show - Early Bird With technology rapidly changing our world, advanced manufacturing and its key components, including IT convergence, computing advances, 3d printing, robotics, lasers and composites, is driving the future and potentially a new economy in Africa… more Probe Corporation firing on all cylinders at key agricultural events This week will prove to be a busy week for local agricultural communities, with two highly anticipated events taking place simultaneously. The internationally-acclaimed NAMPO Harvest Day and Hartebeestloop Bonsmaras will draw crowds in both the… more Get up close and personal with your car Most of us don’t know much about the inner workings of our cars. Why? Possibly our pride or a lack of interest. “But,” says Dewald Ranft, Chairman of the Motor Industry Workshop Association (MIWA), a proud association of the Retail Motor… more Polo's popularity soars amongst South Africans South Africa's most searched for cars in 2019 so far Move over BMW 3 Series and Mercedes-Benz C-Class; the Volkswagen Polo is now the most popular car in the land! This much has been ascertained by an analysis of search data on AutoTrader in… more Horses? This Wild Mustang Has A Whole Stud of ‘em What better way to have celebrated International Mustang Day – April 17 - than collecting your 945 kW (1 267 HP)/1 100Nm Ford Mustang from tuning gurus, RGMotorsport? That’s what one lucky customer got to do, the supercharged, 5.4-litre V8… more Explore the dynamic Southwestern China automotive industry in 2 weeks The sixth edition of the Chengdu International Trade Fair for Automotive Parts and Aftermarket Services (CAPAS) is set to open on 23 to 25 May 2019 at the Chengdu Century City New International Exhibition & Convention Center in China. This… more Jeep Owners Go Topless - International Topless Day Every year, thousands of Jeep owners from around the globe participate in Jeep Go Topless Day (#JeepGoToplessDay), during which they socialise, take part in a range of entertaining activities such as trail runs as well as picnics and most… more Goodyear's ultimate all-rounder: new Eagle F1 Asymmetric 5 combines luxurious comfort… Successor to popular and acclaimed Eagle F1 Asymmetric 3 range Innovative technologies unlock significant improvements in wet braking and dry handling without compromising ride comfort or road noise Caters to growing Ultra High Performance… more Traka Automotive launches into South Africa Taka Automotive, a market leader in networked key management solutions, has established a physical presence and commenced operation in South Africa, following a year of market research. The new Traka Automotive team has already initiated… more Nissan Intelligent Choice offers peace of mind, value for money and a free lifestyle… All cars under four-years-old, with less than 100 000 km on the clock Every car undergoes a 160-point check and a vehicle integrity assessment Nissan South Africa today announced the launch of its new, Nissan Certified Pre-Owned programme -… more FCA Heritage and Alfa Romeo lead the "1000 Miglia" 2019 event From 15 to 18 May, the 37th historical re-enactment of the most famous road race of all time will take place: all eyes will be on the Alfa Romeo brand, "Automotive Global Partner" of the event and also the car manufacturer with the most… more Mobility Supplier DENSO Names its First Executive Lead of North American Diversity and… DENSO committed to a culture of inclusion that promotes a diverse workforce DENSO, the world's second largest mobility supplier, announced today it has appointed Denise Carlson, vice president, responsible for its North American Production… more Alfa Romeo and Abarth triumph at the 2019 "Qatar Car Of The Year" awards Two victories for FCA at the Middle Eastern country's top automotive awards. Alfa Romeo Stelvio Quadrifoglio is named "Best Mid-Size Sports SUV". Abarth 595 Competizione wins the title of "Best Compact Sports Car" in the premium segment. The… more Alliance Ventures focuses on disruptive technology through new partnership with Plug and… Three-year agreement will expand Alliance Ventures’ reach in China and provide Plug and Play start-ups with access to the world’s largest automotive alliance Partnership will add to Alliance Ventures’ efforts to remain at the cutting edge of… more FCA Appoints Meunier as Jeep Global President Fiat Chrysler Automobiles N.V. ("FCA") (NYSE: FCAU/MTA: FCA) today announced that Christian Meunier is named Global President of the Jeep Brand. Meunier also is appointed to the Company's Group Executive Council (GEC). Meunier joins FCA with… more Discover Trends, Explore Innovations Find out what's behind the latest industry trends in 3 CPD accredited workshops. Industry innovators share their experiences and deliver invaluable insights. Exchange ideas with your peers and gain new knowledge that extends beyond your… more Free women, free the economy In South Africa it is well known that women suffer the brunt of our many socio-economic issues. This is largely how females are viewed across South African culture, rather than as a matter of law. According to the Economic Freedom of the World… more Mrs. Zulu's major mountain adventure When Letshego Zulu’s race driver husband Gugu passed away while climbing Kilimanjaro in 2016, she had never ridden in a race car. That all changed late last year when Letshego was invited to compete in the Gold 400 alongside Cross Country racer… more CCBSA launches new smart trucks to promote road safety Coca-Cola Beverages South Africa (CCBSA) today launched a five-year pilot project to run a 44-pallet Performance-Based Standard (PBS) trailer between Bloemfontein and Upington. The launch took place at Gutsche Plant, in Hamilton, Bloemfontein.… more Safe driving tips for the winter season South African roads are unsafe spaces. The festive season death toll in 2018/19 rose by 5% to more than 1600 from an already appalling level. Gumtree Auto’s Jeff Osborne says while there’s little the average citizen can do about South Africa’s… more MasterTips: Road safety during elections South Africa is just a day away from their 6th democratic elections and drivers have an additional consideration to take cognisance of: the extra traffic and challenging road conditions likely to be… more Is it an offence to drive with an expired drivers licence card? While road safety has to be a priority for all South Africans, understanding your rights as a motorist on the roads is also important. Jakkie Olivier, the CEO of the Retail Motor Industry Organisation (RMI), says the topic of whether it is an… more Eco Dealer - Challenge 2050 Eco friendliness, in many ways, is the result of awareness, positive attitudes continuous effort and initiatives. Toyota, as a brand, set themselves some ambitious targets has launched “Challenge 2050” set some ambitious targets to reduce… more SIM swap fraud: A New Wave of Attacks Targeting Financial Services and online services in… During Kaspersky Lab’s annual Cyber Security Weekend that took place in Cape Town, South Africa, Kaspersky Lab experts discussed the wide spread growth of mobile payments across the globe and the many cyber risks that surround such technology.… more CAPAS 2019 responds to local demand and addresses challenges in the market Gender equality remains an issue in motor industry In a recent article, the Motor Industry Staff Association (MISA) called on the South African retail motor industry to accelerate gender equality in the sector. Jeanne Esterhuizen, President of the Retail Motor Industry Organisation (RMI), says… more Winter-proofing your car Winter presents special challenges for South African car owners as freezing temperatures hit the Highveld and lashing rains make life difficult along the coast. Jeff Osborne of Gumtree Autos says a dark and stormy winter’s night is the worst… more SPAR expands contract with MiX Telematics in Southern Africa MiX Telematics (JSE: MIX), a leading global provider of fleet and mobile asset management solutions, announced today that one of Southern Africa’s largest fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) retailers is expanding its adoption of MiX’s solutions.… more Alfa Romeo Concorso dell'Africa Join Alfa Romeo Club South Africa & Arnold Chatz Cars-Dealership for the annual Concorso dell'Africa at the Mall of Africa on the 8th of June. more GLTC gives farming community a lift at NAMPO At this year’s NAMPO, Goscor Lift Truck Company will give the agricultural community a lift by showcasing products and solutions that offer lower total cost of ownership to end users. Grain SA’s NAMPO Harvest Day – a staple on the calendar of… more SRSA tackles township unemployment by supporting entrepreneurship In an effort to drive sustainable township entrepreneurship, Sumitomo Rubber South Africa (Pty) Ltd (SRSA) manufacturer of the iconic Dunlop, Sumitomo and Falken Tyre brands has partnered with the KZN Economic Development, Tourism and… more Future mobility on show at Sun City (SUN CITY, 2 MAY 2019) - “I am excited by the gradual shift to electronic modes of transport. We need to look to the future to obtain solutions for the present. With some foresight, we might be able to save government billions in the long run,… more FAW’s new 6.130 FL commercial vehicle, built with South African pride FAW Vehicle Manufacturers SA (Pty) Ltd has launched the FAW 6.130 FL medium truck, specifically configured for the local market and built right here on South African soil for southern and central African markets. The new FAW 6.130 medium truck… more Ctrack to monitor top 50 finalists in the Hollard Highway Heroes truck driver competition Leading vehicle telematics and tracking services provider, Ctrack, will monitor the driving performance of the 50 finalists in the 2019 Hollard Highway Heroes truck driving competition. Hollard Highway Heroes, which kicked-off earlier this… more NAAMSA quarterly business review 1st quarter report 2019 NAAMSA’s quarterly review of business conditions for the South African motor vehicle manufacturing industry, during the first quarter of 2019, as submitted to the Director-General, Department of Trade and Industry. Industry vehicle sales,… more Comment from The National Automobile Dealers’ Association on April 2019 New Dealer… Overall Dealer sales channel for: April 2019 – 31,945 new vehicles were sold on dealer floors in April 2019 (2018: 31,543 showing a 1.3% increase in sales on dealer floors compared to the same month last year) Cumulative year-on-year April 2019… more Records galore on the export side of the motor industry Dr. Norman Lamprecht, Executive Manager of the National Association of Automobile Manufacturers of South Africa (NAAMSA) as well as the Automotive Industry Export Council (AIEC) has released his 2019 Automotive Export Manual publication on 3… more All roads lead to the CSIR for SATC 2019 Disruptive transport technologies will take centre stage at the 38th annual Southern African Transport Conference (SATC) to be held from 8 to 11 July 2019 at the CSIR Convention Centre in Pretoria. Endorsed by the Department of Transport and… more Street Outlaws visit South Africa This Father’s Day rub shoulders with motor royalty at Gas Motorshow, Umhlanga. Visitors to this year’s Gas Motorshow - taking place June 15 to 17 at Cornubia Mall – will be treated to the sights and sounds of the slickest auto creations from… more 4th Industrial revolution success demands cohesive national effort Automation impacts all industries, could grow business and create jobs, and SA can’t afford to fall behind For South Africa to compete successfully in a 4th Industrial Revolution economy, stakeholders across all sectors must work together to… more SA’s Car Market’s Changing Dynamics Highlighted By Latest Vehicle Price Index Data The South African car market came under renewed pressure in the first quarter of 2019, with the latest TransUnion SA Vehicle Pricing Index (VPI) falling for the seventh consecutive quarter as the effects of fuel hikes, challenging economic… more Women making tracks in the motor industry In an industry traditionally seen as male-dominated, many women are making their mark in the motor industry - owning workshops, playing leading roles on the workshop floor, and running businesses. Dewald Ranft, Chairman of the Motor Industry… more Looking to buy car? Here’s how the fuel hikes might impact you The impact of the expected fuel price increase in May will be wide reaching, according to George Mienie, CEO of AutoTrader. Here are three ways this change may affect your next purchase decision. 1) Manufacturers are likely to offer good deals… more Claims for vehicle repairs – tips to ease the process The claim process for a vehicle repair can feel tedious and stressful at times, but this does not need to be the case, says Jakkie Olivier, CEO of the Retail Motor Industry Organisation (RMI). “Taking out a mechanical breakdown insurance policy… more Digitalisation: 6 key trends disrupting the insurance sector As exponential, digital-driven technologies transform the 4th Industrial Revolution from a buzzword into reality, the financial services sector - and insurance in particular - face massive disruption, it starts with a radical reimagining of the… more MasterDrive Newsletter - 30 April 2019 MasterTips: Phone addicts worse than drunk drivers A new study reveals that drivers who participate in distracted driving pose a greater threat on our roads than even drunk drivers. MasterTest: Sam says it’s a candy apple The Opel Crossland X… more Vehicle Security Upgrades Available Ford takes vehicle security very seriously and continuously invests in security measures that are integrated into our vehicles to deter theft. We are aware of potential security risks to previous-generation ECOSPORT and FIESTA models,… more A tale of two eras: Mandela/Mbeki vs Zuma/Ramaphosa administrations It is an unmitigated moral tragedy that in the year of celebrating what would have been Mandela’s 101st birthday, the incumbent government has betrayed him on an issue about which that he felt strongly. This is the resolution by parliament to… more Puma Energy and Phillip Kekana puts road safety back on the map South Africans to raise their #BeRoadSafe flag and become local road safety heroes across the land. The #BeRoadSafe challenge forms part of the United Nations Road Safety Week which calls on leaders to come up with solutions to stop global road… more World’s #1 Tractor, now at home in South Africa Mahindra South Africa enters into its fourth business line in South Africa by introducing farming equipment The entire range of Farm Equipment products were showcased, including Mahindra tractors and implements and Hisarlar implements – sourced… more Copyright © Litage Publishing. All Rights Reserved E&OE.	cc/2019-30/en_middle_0059.json.gz/line1932
__label__wiki	0.655263	0.655263	Stereoscopic displays Hua, Hong College of Optical Sciences, The University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona. Last reviewed:2005 DOI:https://doi.org/10.1036/1097-8542.YB051780 Principle of 3D viewing Taxonomy of 3D displays Head-attached displays Spatial displays Auto-stereoscopic displays Links to Primary Literature Additional Readings Stereoscopic displays allow observers to perceive depth effects and enable them to visualize information with ever-increasing complexity in three-dimensional (3D) space. The proliferation of 3D displays has been driven mainly by the tremendous potential of virtual reality and augmented reality (VR/AR) for a wide spectrum of application areas such as scientific visualization, engineering design, training and education, and entertainment. Rapid developments in 3D graphics capabilities on personal computers have further expedited the popularity of stereoscopic display techniques. The content above is only an excerpt. You may already have access to this content. for your institution. Subscribe To learn more about subscribing to AccessScience, or to request a no-risk trial of this award-winning scientific reference for your institution, fill in your information and a member of our Sales Team will contact you as soon as possible. Recommend AccessScience to your librarian. Recommend Let your librarian know about the award-winning gateway to the most trustworthy and accurate scientific information. About AccessScience AccessScience provides the most accurate and trustworthy scientific information available. Recognized as an award-winning gateway to scientific knowledge, AccessScience is an amazing online resource that contains high-quality reference material written specifically for students. Contributors include more than 9000 highly qualified scientists and 43 Nobel Prize winners. MORE THAN 8700 articles covering all major scientific disciplines and encompassing the McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Science & Technology and McGraw-Hill Yearbook of Science & Technology 115,000-PLUS definitions from the McGraw-Hill Dictionary of Scientific and Technical Terms 3000 biographies of notable scientific figures MORE THAN 19,000 downloadable images and animations illustrating key topics ENGAGING VIDEOS highlighting the life and work of award-winning scientists SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER STUDY and additional readings to guide students to deeper understanding and research LINKS TO CITABLE LITERATURE help students expand their knowledge using primary sources of information	cc/2019-30/en_middle_0059.json.gz/line1934
__label__cc	0.600164	0.399836	Recombinant Histones to study site- and degree-specific post-translational modifications. Our growing list of available recombinant histones include site- and degree-specific methylation, acetylation and phosphorylation. The combination of histone post-translational modifications form the basis of the 'histone code' that serves to regulate a variety of nuclear functions, such as interactions with chromatin-associated proteins, nucleosome remodeling, transcriptional regulation, replication and DNA repair. Each recombinant histone is prepared using one of two patented technologies: Expressed Protein Ligation (EPL) or Methylated Lysine Analog (MLA). We also offer a subset of our histone H3 proteins biotinylated for use in FRET assays. With our MLA technology, methylated histones are generated via a chemical alkylation reaction to introduce a methyl-lysine analog at the desired lysine location, giving us precise control over the site and degree of methylation. Alternatively, the EPL technology can be used to generate methylated, acetylated and phosphorylated histones in which the histone globular domain is ligated to a peptide containing the N-terminal histone tail with site-specific modifications. This ligation reaction maintains the native histone bonds. For more information on EPL and MLA technologies, click on the EPL and MLA Technologies tab at the bottom of the page. All proteins are determined to be over 98% pure. Active Motif has now added Recombinant Histone H3 biotinylated protein to it's portfolio of recombinant histones. The recombinant H3 protein is linked to biotin at the N-terminus via a carbon linker. The addition of the biotin enables capture of protein binding interactions utilizing the recombinant histone as a substrate. The biotinylated histone H3 protein is also an ideal substrate for homogenous FRET assays. Simply incubate the recombinant histone with the enzyme of interest and detect using streptavidin-coated donor beads and antibody-conjugated acceptor beads. Click on our link to learn more about the Recombinant Histone H3 biotinylated. A complete list of recombinant histones is shown below. Click on the protein name to see complete information. EPL and MLA Technologies Recombinant Histone H1 E. coli 100 µg 81126 ¥32,000 Buy 1 mg 81826 ¥149,000 Buy Recombinant Histone H1T E. coli 100 µg 81127 ¥32,000 Buy Recombinant Histone H2A (Human) E. coli 100 µg 31490 ¥24,000 Buy 1 mg 31890 ¥88,000 Buy Recombinant Histone H2A/H2B dimer E. coli 100 µg 81167 ¥74,000 Buy Recombinant Histone H2A.Z/H2B dimer E. coli 100 µg 81168 ¥74,000 Buy Recombinant Histone H2B (Human) E. coli 100 µg 31492 ¥24,000 Buy Recombinant Histone TH2B E. coli 100 µg 31577 ¥32,000 Buy Recombinant Histone H2BFWT E. coli 100 µg 31578 ¥32,000 Buy Recombinant Histone H3T3ph (EPL) E. coli 25 µg 31274 ¥75,000 Buy Recombinant Histone H3K4ac (EPL) E. coli 25 µg 31275 ¥75,000 Buy The ability to alter protein structure through the introduction of synthetic modifications is a powerful technique that can be utilized to dissect protein function and to facilitate the generation of research tools or therapeutic reagents. Chemical synthesis of peptides is a technically demanding process and also restricts the size of the generated protein. Therefore, a more robust technique is required to generate large modified proteins, such as histones. Current methods used for constructing modified recombinant histones include solid phase peptide synthesis (SPPS), reductive alkylation and semisynthetic methods that utilize transferases to catalyze the transfer of modified groups to specified residues. However these methods have their disadvantages, including: Size limitation of the synthesized protein The availability of the transferase enzyme Variability in the degree of modifications catalyzed by the reaction Heterogeneity in the specificity of the enzyme To overcome these limitations, Active Motif’s recombinant histones are engineered using one of two patented technologies: Expressed Protein Ligation (EPL) or Methylated Lysine Analog (MLA). EPL is a semisynthetic method in which an expressed protein (rather than a synthesized peptide with limited fragment size) containing an unprotected C-terminal thioester is ligated to a peptide containing an N-terminal cysteine via a chemoselective reaction. The reaction, known as ‘native chemical ligation,’ preserves the native amine bond. In the case of recombinant histones, this involves the ligation of a histone tail containing the site-specific modification to the globular histone globular domain. Along with preserving the natural protein structure, this method allows for the engineering of large synthetic proteins and permits incorporation of a broad range of histone modifications found in nature. Click on image to enlarge size. Figure 1: Generation of modified recombinant histones using the EPL method. Expressed protein ligation (EPL) is used to synthesize full-length modified recombinant H3 histone proteins. A synthetic N-terminal peptide containing the post-translational modification (PTM) and an alanine (Ala)-conjugated thioester (activated) is ligated to a cysteine (Cys)-containing expressed C-terminal histone H3 globular domain through a series of reactions that preserve the native peptide bonds. Using the alternative MLA technology, methylated histones are generated via a chemical alkylation reaction that substitutes a methylated analog of lysine, aminoethylcysteine, for the existing lysine at the desired residue. Aminoethylcysteine is structurally and chemically similar to lysine, though it contains an ethylamine substitution in place of the lysine ϒ-methylene. The lysine analogs can be chemically treated for engineering of modified histones to provide precise control over the site and degree of methylation. Studies demonstrate that modified histones engineered using the MLA technique show functional similarity to their natural counterparts. Figure 2: Comparison of the chemical structures of lysine and methyl-lysine analogs. The image depicts the similarities in the chemical structure of lysine and and the lysine analog, aminoethylcysteine. Aminoethylcysteine contains and ethylamine substitution (highlighted in gray) in place of the lysine ϒ-methylene (highlighted in gray). Alkylation of the ethylamine residue converts aminoethylcysteine into mono-, di- and tri-methyl lysine analogs (Me=methyl, in red). Figure 3: Comparison of the performance of histone substrates in a histone demethylase assay reveal recombinant histone H3K4me2 protein (MLA) more closely mimics native histone substrates. The positive control LSD1 enzyme from the Histone Demethylase Assay (Cat No. 53200) was used to assay for demethylase activity using either a histone H3K4me2 peptide or the included recombinant histone H3K4me2 (MLA) protein (Cat No. 31209). One µg of LSD1 was tested with either 70 µM H3K4me2 peptide or with 13 µM recombinant histone H3K4me2 protein generated using MLA technology. LSD1 was able to convert 73% of the recombinant histone H3K4me2 protein substrate into formaldehyde, yet it was only able to convert 14% of the H3K4me2 peptide into formaldehdye, even though there was 5-fold more peptide available than recombinant protein for the same amount of LSD1 enzyme. The higher rates of conversion achieved from the use of the recombinant histone H3K4me2 (MLA) protein more closely resemble in vivo conditions and demonstrate the high level of functional similarity between modified histones generated using MLA techniques and native histones. Lin, J.C. et al. (2007) Cancer Cell, 12: 432-444. Muir, T.W. (2003) Annu Rev Biochem, 72: 249-289 * The MLA technology is covered under U.S. Patent No. 8,278,112. EPL patent is pending.	cc/2019-30/en_middle_0059.json.gz/line1937
__label__wiki	0.713749	0.713749	by lucasabia October 15, 201811:51 am January 13, 2019 Unchained Out of the frustration surrounding the lack of women of color in front and behind the camera in the film industry, New Yorker best friends Lynnese Page and Victoria Miller made the decision to create a monologue series filmed called CharacterBased and go crowdfunding. Their aim is twofold: to showcase Lynnese’s dynamic range and confront inequality in film by creating their own content. Indeed, diversity in the film industry is still a big issue which needs to be fixed. According to the latest study from Dr. Stacy Smith and the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, which analyzed the top 100 movies each year from 2007 through 2017, “no meaningful change” had occurred in the percentage of characters of color who appeared on screen during the years studied. And the percentage of females on screen in 2017 was only 1.9 percent higher than the percentage in 2007, Lynnese and Victoria claim in their campaign page on crowdfunding platform Indiegogo. Working in the film industry within different capacities for over twelve years, Victoria and Lynnese aim to raise $6,000 to produce three more films. We caught up with co-producer Victoria Miller to find out more about the project. Oliver: Where does the name CharacterBased come from? Victoria Miller: The name CharacterBased is fairly simple: it derives from the idea that each monologue performance is based on a specific character from either television, theater, novels, and films. Pictured above: Victoria Miller (L) and Lynnese Page (R). Photograph by Diomargy Nuñez. (Source: Indiegogo) O: Why crowdfunding, what do you expect to achieve by using it apart from fundraising your project? VM: It was a difficult decision to choose crowdfunding. The first three films we produced, we invested our own money, and asked for free favors from crew members. However, we really wanted this to be an ongoing series, something we could work on apart from our jobs, that fulfilled a creative void. We had never done crowdfunding before, and a few people suggested we try it. We figured we might as well see if we could raise money to produce three more films, rather than use our savings, which felt unrealistic in the long-run. Additionally, crowdfunding is a great way to gain more visibility, and I think we’ve connected with a small community of people who resonate with this project. It’s important that we bring awareness to the inequality that still pervades the film and televisions industries. We really want to bring visibility to potential solutions to work around the boundaries, and deep disparities in many parts of the entertainment world. O: How crowdfunding is helping you in shaping your voice? VM: Crowdfunding has helped us learn how to take a clear stance on something we feel passionate about: there’s a deeper understanding of how to take both support and criticism in stride. O: What actionable steps to confront an industry model that no longer works will you be taking? How will you inspire other people to follow? VM: The ‘actionable steps’ is about personal empowerment: If you’re an actor that isn’t happy with the way your reel looks, because you’re frequently cast in stereotypical roles, or roles that don’t showcase your range, we hope the CharacterBased model can inspire others to follow the same structure, and create a portfolio that truly reflects who they are as an actor/actress. Tagged with: CharacterBased Cinema Film Indiegogo Industry Lynnese Page Movies TV Victoria Miller	cc/2019-30/en_middle_0059.json.gz/line1944
__label__cc	0.685058	0.314942	Margaret Cho on Comedy, Bisexuality, and The Slow-Carb Diet (#43) “My dog thought I was a singer… because dogs don’t understand standup comedy.” -Margaret Cho [20:40] [Housekeeping update: The demand for my $5K Holiday Megabox exceeded expectations, so I’m opening up a few more slots. First come, first served, and deadline is 11:59pm PT today, November 11, 2014. Click here for more details.] Margaret Cho is a polymath. She is an internationally acclaimed comic, actress, author, fashion designer and singer-songwriter. Perhaps you’ve seen her on the big screen, or in TV series such as Sex and the City and 30 Rock. But well before she was on Dancing with the Stars (yes, she’s done that, too), she decided on her comedy career… at the tender age of eight. The stage has been her constant companion ever since. In this episode we delve into her comic influences and approaches, bisexuality, slow-carb adventures, and much more. Please indulge me as we dig deep into the lesser-known tricks of the Slow-Carb Diet. Margaret had a lot of detailed questions (she’s followed it for ~3 months), and the answers might help accelerate your own fat loss. (If you want more, here are several case studies — with pics — who’ve lost 100+ pounds.) Ep 43: Margaret Cho on Comedy, Bisexuality, and The Slow-Carb Diet https://rss.art19.com/episodes/5e3792ad-44d0-4f82-9b03-8dcdc957b4de.mp3Download Download it as an MP3 by right clicking here and choosing “save as.” This podcast is brought to you by 99Designs, the world’s largest marketplace of graphic designers. Did you know I used 99Designs to rapid prototype the cover for The 4-Hour Body? Here are some of the impressive results. This episode is also brought to you by ExOfficio, which I’ve personally used since 2005 or so. They make ultra-lightweight, quick drying, antimicrobial clothing for men and women. Here’s my own ultra-light packing list (scroll down for video), which went viral. QUESTION(S) OF THE DAY: What’s your favorite curse word — or phrase — and why? Please click here to let me know in the comments. Who should I interview next? Please let me know on Twitter or in the comments. Do you enjoy this podcast? If so, please leave a short review here. It keeps me going… Subscribe to The Tim Ferriss Show on iTunes. Non-iTunes RSS feed Explore Margaret Cho’s Writing: I Have Chosen to Stay and Fight \| I’m The One That I Want Overeaters Anonymous and HOW for those struggling with food cravings How to Be a Movie Star by William J. Mann Connect with Margaret Cho: Website \| Twitter \| Facebook \| YouTube \| Instagram What compels Margaret to perform stand-up comedy [3:30] The early years of Margaret’s comedy career [4:50] On the appeal of Joan Rivers and her immense gratitude [8:50] Fearlessness and Margaret’s most fearful on-stage moments [11:30] How to deal with hecklers [15:45] Margaret’s inspirations [19:30] Revealing intimate traits on stage and thoughts on female bisexuality [23:00] The challenges of the isolated comedian lifestyle, and the potential for drug addiction [30:00] Personality traits for those who gravitate towards stimulants vs. depressants [33:00] The catalyzing moment when Margaret decided her prescription pill addiction needed to be fought [34:45] Margaret Cho’s process for creating new material [40:30] Why to hone an act (or product) internationally before bringing it to the USA – Note: Nike does this. [42:30] “Successful” — who comes to mind? Does Margaret self-identify as successful? [48:00] Clarifications on the Slow-Carb Diet and cheat day [50:30] Hunger and human resilience [58:30] Her death-row meal and why it’s changed since starting the SCD [1:10:30] Margaret’s favorite curse word [1:11:45] Stand-up pre-game rituals [1:13:45] On Hollywood success and the types who aren’t tortured by it [1:16:10] What attributes Dave Grohl exhibits, and why drummers tend to be positive people [1:17:30] Aisha Tyler — How to Use Pain, Comedy, and Practice for Creativity (#327) The Tim Ferriss Show Transcripts: Aisha Tyler (#327) Posted on: November 10, 2014. ← Rolf Potts on Travel Tactics, Creating Time Wealth, and Lateral Thinking (#41 & #42) Nick Ganju on The Majesty of Ping Pong, Poker, and How to Write Hit Songs (#45) → Leave a Reply to Joe Cancel reply 99 comments on “Margaret Cho on Comedy, Bisexuality, and The Slow-Carb Diet (#43)” chillik — Another great Episode Tim! How do you go about approaching guests and arranging interviews with your already busy schedule. How many people are currently on your team? John John — Sorry Tim, love almost everything you do but this episode wasn’t mind boggling like the others. Please interview some really interesting people like your friend Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Tony Hsieh or even Marc Benioff if you can. Who’s Ian Robinson? A sound engineer who helps with the audio, show note time stamps, etc.! Ross — Great interview Tim, comedians do seem to struggle with the highs and low more then most, a listening to marc Marron wtf podcast (which is where I discovered you btw) -interview 100’S of comedians, actors and musicians metal illness and addiction seems to be a common crux, it great that you incorage your guests to talk about their issues in such an open way. (and yes of corse you apprence of his podcast was a notable exception) Yours ross #timtimtalktalk Dave Gray — Bollocks! it doesn’t get more British than this. Just like the Sex Pistols album in the 80’s “Never mind the Bollocks here is the Sex Pistols”. I live in Australia now the Aussies love this. “That’s Bollocks” Meaning that is not technically factual. “Hey Bollocks” Meaning Hello you, who I have little respect for. “Oh bollocks” Meaning Shit that was a mistake. So far lost 4 KG on the Slow Carb Diet. Your “I’m the one that I want” link is pointing at the other book. Waller — Best curse word – KAK, pronounced Cuck or Kuk. It is multi purpose and can be used in the following instances – this tastes kak! Or at the gym about to dead lift some kak heavy load. Your mate just broke up with his bird – bro that is super kak how about a glass of vino? Kelly Heth — My favorite curse is BIFi pronounced “Biffy”= Brute Force and Fucking Ignorance. I’m in the army so whenever there is something that needs some pounding to fix this is my word. goddessofhealing — Re: Favorite curse word & why – That’s tough because “fuck” and “shit” are so versatile – and I combine them to make new words – fucktardery, relationshit, shituation – but I’m going to go with “fuck” because it just emphasizes the situation with a bigger exclamation point: fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck!!!!! ❤ 🙂 I answered before listening to the podcast – going to do that while I run – Thanks, Tim – You rock! Tim, even though it may be difficult, I think there is a very thin line that you can be on so that you’d satisfy your writing needs and wants (like writing books) and not being anti-social. The line exists, but it’s not easy to find! Adam Grant talks about being able to successfully be an introvert and extrovert at the same time. I know it sounds crazy, but it’s possible. I think you know him 😉 Cristi Vlad Favorite curse word is just a simple “fuck” because it’s so expressive…it has more meanings than any other single word in the English language so I find it’s quite versatile. And it just makes me feel better after saying it which has something to do with the mix of a long fricative followed by a door slamming plosive. I used to drop F-bombs so much I got the nick-name “fuck-man” and then my friends loved to remind everyone it wasn’t because of what you might think haha. My favorite curse phrase is “Thunder Cunt” since it conveys so much power. You are such a cunt that your are a thunder cunt. Also, I have never been able to use it with a straight face. Please try to interview Pete from Mr. Money Mustache, http://www.mrmoneymustache.com. He is the antithesis of Ramit Sethi. Pete retired at 30 years old with a $600,000 nest egg from working as a software engineer. He lives a frugal life in Longmont Colorado and started his website to teach people how to retire early through frugal living. Now I believe he has 6 million unique page visits per month. Thanks, Dan. I’ll check him out. Ditto! Mr. Money Mustache is a total badass and one of the few people (including you) I follow religiously online. Coach Kip — Thank you for another great interview. I really like how you have been bringing us people from different genres. It is very interesting to see the similarities in success and achievement, and it is even more interesting in the different possibilities and pathways that there are to take to get there. Dustin Ramage — First a correction to the show notes then a question, and a suggestion The minutes are off on the show notes. For example. Margaret starts talking about her early comedy career around the 8:20 range. The five minute intro must have not been accounted for in the interview. Who or where would you recommend a novice to go to for learning stand up for the first time. Whether it be a DVD to learn from or a Live Coach/experience. Also I think many others would agree that an 8 part Joe Rogan Interview Series would be awesome to try out. Release one a month in between other interviews. One to two longs days of work can be used to help you fill the gap should you have trouble thinking up of new people to interview. I’m gonna give that underwear a try. Or is that too much information? Anders — Interview Kyle Bass on money management, risk management, how do you make a bet and then hedge it, how to invest in this climate (where bond returns are next to zero). In short: the mental models of a hedge fund manager. P K Kühl — My favorite curse word by far is Fuck but I don’t know why I’ve said it as far back as I can remember My mom confirms she has told me she is offended & yet at age 48 I still let it fly w/o realizing I’ve said it sorry mom I’ve gotten more disciplined obviously as I age however I still Love thst word Thanks for your GREAT interviews!! Don’t know how you do it…..PKK steventothemax — Interview Jeff Olson. He just spoke at the United Nations on the international day of happiness and his new company did $400 million in 30 months. Janice Plado Dalager — Everything & everyone benefits from a well-placed “fuck.” Especially since most of us are barraged by poor fucks and unnecessary fucks. A well-placed “fuck” does wonders for the soul. Stephanie Sanchez — My favorite curse word(s) is “Jesus H. Christ”. Does anyone know what the H. stands for? jpkallio — Great episode. Would love to hear you interview Dave Grohl. Ethan Glover — Tim, the link for “I’m the One that I Want” is wrong, that’s going to “I Have Chosen to Stay and Fight”. (Both links go to the same book.) Thanks for the heads up! I’ll get it fixed now… Thanks Tim — any chance you could also have podcasts transcribed? Inexpensive process when outsourced, and a great boon to your time-starved followers. Reading seems to be about five times faster than listening — and things like hyperlinks to topics would make it even faster. Joe Ramos — Just so happens, my roommate and a buddy that runs The Weary Traveler (excellent dining in Madison, WI) just shared a fun game with me. You match a curse or derogatory term with a nautical term. “Douche Canoe” seems to have made it into the American lexicon already, but “shit jib” and “cunt anchor” are my personal favorites 🙂 Hans Eisenman — Favorite swearing phrase: “mother puss buckets!!” because it helps keep me from swearing in front of my kids and reminds me of one of my fave movies (Ghostbusters). Ben Johansson — Being Swedish, my reflexive and favourite expletive has to be “Jävlar!”. Try it! [jaevlar] Tim, question on diet: I followed the slow-carb, specifically “losing the last mile”, and the standard version, but I acquired Hypervitaminosis A. It was probably due to overusing Cod liver oil. (Not as recommended by the 4HB) My doctor was the one who made the call that it was Hypervitaminosis. But the only treatments he has prescribed are “wait for it to eliminate” and “Vitamin E”, neither of which has worked. And he knows no other treatments, other than surgery. I’ve had this recurringly for 1 whole year, and it’s horrible. (Just look up “Increased intracranial pressure.) Do you have any ideas or leads on how to get rid of Hypervitaminosis A? You’re extremely keen at biochemistry and thought you might have an idea. Loved the podcast! Other suggestions for guests: Hugh Jackman. Naval Ravikant. Nassim Taleb. Matt Mullenweg!!!! Maybe someone in animation? All men. Use your jävla imagination…. Kind — Vitamin A needs to be balanced with Vitamin D to protect against toxicity; it works both ways (A protects against excess D toxicity). Maybe up the D for awhile? And try liver-supportive herbs so your poor liver can detox it all. The ideal ratio of A to D is supposedly 5:1, btw. Best wishes. Marsh — Tim- This one is too good to pass up… Favorite Curse Phrase: “Suck a bag of dicks”. The reason seems appropriate for this episode. Louis CK, genius comedian, has permanently scarred my brain with hilarious images of what such an ambiguous proposal suggests. It also is just fun to say… Louis CK’s bit on the phrase can be found here: Who to interview next? Bode Miller. Your discussion with Joe De Sena touched on some unique qualities that alpine ski racers possess (grit, tolerance for discomfort, etc.) and Bode has some amazing traits that stand out from the ranks of ski racers that I can see being very interesting to explore for your listeners. He’s a guy who seems to truly think for himself and he defines success differently than most professional athletes. He’s also known for some innovative workout techniques and not giving a shit about what you or I think of him. Pretty inspiring character. I’m definitely a “FUCK!” kind of a guy. SOOO versatile. But GodDammit works pretty well too. Thanks for all the great info Tim. qslincoln — Sorry to hear about still having insomnia. Do you think adding dairy into your diet would improve sleep? May be worth a try. Guess everyone will have their own advice though. What about turmeric, does that help? Bet jiu jitsu helps as well. Microdose lithium is really interesting: http://www.pureencapsulations.com/education-research/newscaps/newscap-02-13-14 I like cunt. It feels good on the mouth, it’s easy to say, rarely heard in the States, and pack more of a punch than pussy. Keep up the help brother. We all really dig what you do. sllvn56 — Awesome episode! Definitely interesting gcarey — As an Australian, we definitely like to use that slang within many sentences and contexts. As an aside, studying Mandarin at university in China a few years ago, a good Australian friend of mine used to love saying (in his most bogan/redneck accent) “不知 fucking 道” to a wonderful reception from the other expats and international students. It killed me because, as you say, you wouldn’t put it in the middle of a word. My favorite curse— May you get what you deserve. First of all,if they’ve done something horrible, then it reflects the energy back at them magnified. It advocates responsibility for their actions. There’s always the possibility that the person that I’m angry with is acting bad for a justifiable reason that I am unaware of. Maybe the person who cut me off in traffic is distracted because she just got diagnosed with cancer. Then the curse becomes a gentler reflection on mitigating circumstances. It really just says it all. I have been very patient and waiting for transcripts to your show. You promised the transcripts. I guess your Four Hour Work Week system didn’t live it up to the systematization of transcribing. I bought all of your books. I share your blog and books with many. I made several requests for transcripts and you said you will. Why? I am deaf and the podcasts are useless unless there is a written version accompanying the podcasts. Show notes doesn’t suffice. That is so nonequivalent function. Tim – I give up. I am going to pay attention more to those podcasters, bloggers, and vloggers who care about their fans and do a damn good job with their content producing and insure that their delivery is available in different formats insure its material accessibility. Those are people that value me as a human being. It is worst feeling in the world to be putting on sideline — marginalized. Your karma sucks. So long,Tim. Kim C — My favourite swear word is fuck. Always has been. It fits into lots of sentences & situations nicely. Love your work. I’d love you to interview Amanda Palmer & Shirley Manson ( lead singer of Garbage). Two strong women kicking arse in the male dominated music industry. Fuckn-a tweetie. Ben Maxwell — Loved this episode. Especially the #4HB Cheat Day redux. I’ve done everything you suggest in that part for almost the last three years and went thru the exact same process Margaret is going through. I learned early to do a normal #SCD bfast after one of my first cheat days when I had fried matzo and then felt crap the entire day. So nearly EVERY SINGLE DAY since I started has begun with eggs, spinach, & black beans. Then I do the grapefruit juice + coffee before having the eggs Benedict & pancakes and brunch craziness. (I do try to have protein with every subsequent meal to limit carb cravings.) I do have a milkshake, ice cream, and chocolate obsession and go thru exactly what you said abt ‘getting it all in’ on cheat day, however, I try to stop the cheating at 9 or 10pm to give my body more time to recover. But yes, I do make myself a little ill every Sunday and it staves off cravings until around Thursday. And I choose to make my cheat foods ‘worth it’ and not wasted on pure crap. And for a radio guy working in Korea, all of that is saying something. Before I sign off on this, my favorite swear word is the British way of saying “fucking cunt.” coachjv65 — My favorite curse word: unbefuckinglievable. Stephenie — The Four hour Workweek book was quite practical and interesting. But while reading, on page 134, bullet 6 there was a statement I found offensive ” Do not accept orders from common mail fraud countries such as Nigeria”. I am a Nigerian aspiring to be an Entrepreneur. How do you want me or other Nigerians to feel? We place orders from countries overseas and they ship the goods to us? We also as a nation do business with other countries and International organizations despite prevalent of corruption in our system. So I don’t think its fair to site us as examples as it gives a total wrong impression of my country to other readers worldwide. I also suggest removal of that ‘phrase’ during your next revised edition. John Dziki — I would and Romania to list too, for same reason. Sorry but profiling exists because it works. Scheintz — Made up expletives are the best (especially when around young children or when driving with the windows down). Two of my favorites: Crunt and suckatang jfee — I’m loving the shows! Keep up the good work! Since you asked about the audio… You sound better during the podcast than the intro IMHO, but both are useable. I might consider compressing and de-essing a little heavier and adding a few dB of transparent limiting at the end of the signal chain – not because it will sound better, but because most of us are listening in the car or in other situations where there’s a lot of background noise so it will help keep the avg volume up so we’re not missing stuff in the quieter sections or reaching for the volume as often. Also, the bumper music sounds like it got converted to a low quality mp3 at some point (have a listen to this music intro vs the music intro in Robbins pt1). Overall though, your podcast audio is way above the average, good work! David J. Bradley — Guest Idea: Ari Emanuel – a talent agent that’s going into the angel investing game might be interesting (and how the two worlds mesh, or clash). P.S. I appreciate the diversity of guests, for example, this episode! Favorite curse word? Bollocks! Old school, fun to say and you get to explain it to people after they hear it. Is there anyway you could get a Joe Rogan interview? He has been on show twice. Jackass — Man I don’t think Fonzy had an ounce of cool. Cho has been working out a lot of issues. That penninsula has been the most faught over peace of realestate except maybe Vietnam (I doubt it) last centurary it is important that she works it out I hope all the decendants find recovery. My favorite curse words are “Leave my family out of this” ac — It would be great if you can have Rory Sutherland, the wiki man on the show, and please make it really, really long. He covers a lot about marketing, human behavior and design on his talks and writing. He strikes me as someone who has a unique way of thinking and who appreciates food, travel and life, so if you can interview him about his “philosophy of life” and his views on success (including the appreciation vs achievement problem) it would be amazing. You can also talk about books (classics), writing and creativity. Love this interview with him: His column at The Spectator: http://www.spectator.co.uk/life/the-wiki-man/ Thank you so much for all the time and effort you put into the podcasts, they are wonderful! Favorite curse word… clusterfuck. Simultaneously expressive of the screwed up situation it describes, and funny as hell. I smile when I say it, even if I’m talking about something bad. Will 2nd other commenters on a Dave Grohl interview! Dude is a beast on drums and vocals! He plays anything from coffee shops to arenas, would love to hear more about him, from him! Caitlin — My favourite string of swear words that rolls off the tongue is “Jesus Mother Fucking Christ.” It’s long enough that I can inflect the right level of frustration. It’s also satisfying because of the strong reactions that it illicits. llamacroft — Favourite curse word at the moment is ARSE BISCUIT. Got to love the English language. I enjoy reading your emails. Dude, i kind of remenber her from a movie, looking carefully, i realize her jokes are not that funny, as most of jokes, i beleive her secret is the fearless approach combined with a great emotional potential she puts into her jokes that make them explode into laughs. She has mastered herself therefore she is mastering the world. thomas stewart — Not sure if it was upload quality but the intro recording sounded “glassy” not a great sound! Thanks for a great episode Tim! Also any chance you could do a SCD podcast? Maybe a group interview with success stories? Obviously it is a GREAT book but there seems to be a huge lack of success stories/before after photos online. And we would love to know more about those who have had such tremendous results! Ariel — You should interview Thanissaro Bikkhu. He is an American Buddhist monk living in San Diego area. Very prolific writer! I think he combines a very down to earth take on meditation and a critical view of the mindfulness movement. He would be a good contrast/supplement to Sam Harris and Tony Robbins, Ramy — Favorite curse: the old Arab favorite “you son of a shoe!”. Apparently, shoes are really looked down upon in the Middle East. Best curse word has to be “muthafucka”: it’s so offensive and the same vowel sound 4 times in rapid succession is so musical, plus Richard Pryor and Miles Davis raised its use to art form. Nes — Interview a magician i think they are all lesser known but when are you going to hack magic its easy to learn but hard to master this art Sachin — Awesome if you could interview Seth Godin S.K. — Honest request: Interview Naval Ravikant. Brilliant entrepreneur. Almost anything that he says is pure golden. What makes him so interesting is that he’s different, and better. I’d love to hear the experiences that lead up to that point. Seems like Margaret isn’t used to giving highly detailed answers. I still liked it though. It tells a lot about the culture among stand-up comedians. Anyone else think Tim has a Cato-like effect on people he interviews? I might be wrong. Just a feeling I got. Favourite episodes so far, if you want a template for your next ones: Waitzkin, Tony Robbins (because he’s just impossible not to like….). And Dr Mager + Kelly Starrett. Tracy Denunzio. Fantastic report. And I came away from all of them with so much I wanted to try myself. Didn’t you have an interview with Schwarzenegger? Ty Wilkins — Jive Turkey. According to Urban Dictionary, it’s the most offensive word in the English language. 🙂 When I was younger my favourite curse word was CNUT (yep this is the proper spelling pronounced ka-nute). I used to like it because you could pretty much call anyone it to their face but they’d be oblivious to the fact that you’d really be calling them a cunt. Over time though, I got into a bad habit of using it on everyone. If my granny did something wrong I’d call her a Cnut without thinking…this is like therapy telling you all this…”My name is Chris, and I used to call my granny a cunt” 😦 I like ‘frak’. Been using it since the original Battlestar Galactica. Sounds vulgar but isn’t. Guest I want to hear is Mark Rippetoe author of Starting Strength. Fuck it is a majical word Thanks for the awesome podcasts! Would love to hear from Elon Musk in the future if you can get a hold of him. Also, i’m sure you’ve tried both of these for your insomnia, but I find Melatonin super helpful if you have 6+ available for sleep, or pot if you have to get up soonish. Marco Koskinen — I love your podcast. It’s my soundtrack for assembling megabuck watches here in Switzerland. It would be out of this world to hear you change ideas with Henry Rollins. I don’t know if you guys really are compatible but I can’t think of two more entertaining book freaks.cheers, Marco. Tim Ferriss I am a giant fan of your books, blog, and podcasts. You have inspired me to take my self to the next level. I believe Peter Sage would be an awesome guest for your podcasts. He is an amazingly inspiring person like you and the combination of you two would be dynamite. Tim, Please interview A.J. Jacobs for us. The internet needs this =) alexanderholtuk — Best swear word / phrase I use at work quite a bit when ‘motivating’ a panicking team: “Just CTFD and CTFU !” (Calm the F down and cheer the F up) This blog have some lifekacking tips + some business strategies. Maybe is a good idea to make list of thing that can improve your life for free? – anki – duolingo – udemy What do you think about it? CJ Jones — Allergic to Vicodin as well (nausea) but Tramadol AKA Ultram (synthetic opioid) works great without the nausea. Although it can keep you up if taken close to bedtime unless you take with muscle relaxant like Robaxin which it is usually prescribed with for muscle sprains or strains. Another side effect is not a buzz but a heightened focus and energy and an off label use for some as an instant relief from depression (at low doses) which I’ve experienced which scares me too from wanting to use it long term. I’d rather have it for when I need acute pain relief. Anyways great thought provoking podcast A. Collins — Great article! Keep ’em coming! A great guy to interview is investor/economist/author Eric Janszen. He has a web site http://www.itulip.com/ dafyddrhysowenDafydd — Twat – It has a nice sound like a slap in the face. Not quite as effective in a US accent though. And Arse Biscuits – just for soft comedy value. Just about to embark on my own slow-carb adventure as I downloaded the book yesterday. Check out James Ketchell – the first man to summit Everest, row the Atlantic and cycle around the world all after surviving a massive motorbike crash. Rachel Westlake — Check out this interview from “Second Opinion Series; The Digestion Sessions”. Dr. Datis Kharrazian is interviewed by Sean Croxton (Underground Wellness Radio). Discusses the Gut-Brain Axis. Free to watch today. Maybe you should interview Dr. Kharrazian. ha, and the link… https://digestion sessions.com/dr-datis-kharrazian Suggesto — Tim, I have to agree with John John. This was sub par compared with your usual standard. The 5min intro/sponsor spiel is getting a bit tedious and I appreciate that you are relatively new to interviewing but can you please try to keep your questions a bit more concise? The rambling questions are longer than the answers in some episodes! I think when it comes to curse words, you gotta go with “douche-bag.” Jon — Tim been a fan for a while. Got your books and now enjoying the podcast. Given your martial arts and performance background I’d like to suggest you interview Rodney King from South Africa. Rodney is a 3rd degree black belt under Rigan Machado, founder of the International Crazy Monkey Defense Program and a PhD candidate in leadership performance. Alexander Francesco — Love this episode! Keep it coming Tim! Suggested guests: The writer Bill James, statistician Nate Silver and surgeon Atul Gawande. Great interview Tim! Favorite curse word: f*ck 🙂 Jash — Taylor Mendelsohn — Where did all the written content go? I was just looking at websites for inspiration on how to develop mine and realized I actually don’t like yours. Love your books and older articles, but this podcast/video stuff doesn’t do it for me. Just my 2 cents. Have a good one. Awesome, thanks for this Tim, l’m also a massive proponent of the slow carb diet mglavere — I was a little surprised by this podcast. I loved every episode so far, but this one seemed to fall flat. I’ve seen Margaret Cho’s stand-up before, and some of her jokes were alright. But on this interview she seemed devoid of personality and boring. There was no energy. I know it’s got to be frustrating for comedians to do interviews when everyone is expecting them to say something funny or crack jokes. But this interview was just bland, and a lot of the response to Tim’s questions seemed to be obvious or lacking any thought. The one “joke” she told was not even a joke. She stumbled and ho-hummed her way through a retelling of getting laid by a younger guy after a dry spell. I think even Tim had that awkward moment of “am I supposed to laugh now?” Comedy is your craft. You make your living off of the laughs and pleasure that you bring to others. You would think it’d be good to represent that while doing an interview. You wouldn’t invite a guitarist to a music show and not expect him/her to show off a little on their instrument. At one point I started wondering if Tim was interviewing the wrong person. Also I would have liked for more discussion about bisexuality and her experiences as an Asian-American, particularly because they seem to be a large influence in her stand-up routines. Anyways, great stuff about slow-carb dieting. I think some people miss the point that having a cheat day is incredibly beneficial for long term results and maintaining a low body fat for more than just a couple of weeks. Although I subscribe to a slightly different diet (little to no carbs during the week), I use the cheat day in the same way. It was pretty much the only way I was able to keep under 10% body fat for two years straight. The cheat day gives you something to look forward to and a way to stave off cravings. But it’s also a way to regulate eating by forming a routine. If you’re craving pizza on Tuesday you know you can have as much as you want come Saturday. Pretty soon it just becomes habit to avoid “bad” foods except on your cheat day. The psychological reward is also worth the wait. If you’ve ever spent a week eating like crap the last thing you want come the weekend is burgers and fries. And that feeling sucks. As for the swear word, I’ll take Adam Carolla’s approach: Everyone should have a “Fuck You” canned for just the right occasion. Thanks again for doing a podcast Tim, I’ve read all of your books and this has been a great way to get more of your insights on the go. I’m looking forward to the next show. AlbertoMera — It was fun when you asked her why Italy and Spain were difficult markets in her opinion! I’m Spanish and it’s such a shame that we miss her cause of that. I could tell by your surprised tone that you have us for more open minded people (thanks for the support, Tim!) I’m not one to comment whether she is right or wrong, she probably knows the markets better but I wish she gave us a chance. Keep it up! Thanks! lozzablog — I, and many others, would love it if you did an inbetweenesode on the Slow-Carb Diet: – Your current daily diet – New Slow Carb hacks – Any new Slow Carb developments – Most effective supplementary exercises or fat loss strategies to run alongside the Slow Carb I appreciate that a lot of this is covered in the 4 Hour Body, but it would be great to see what you might add, and to explore the diet in a podcast format. tinach — I couldn’t get past casual mentioning of a pet psychic 🙂 Joseph Samuel — Loved the episode, but I can’t help asking– You touched on stimulants vs depressants and addiction. Cho mentioned scatterbrains tend to prefer stimulants for attention, while depressants are typically used by those more prone to moody behavior. What do you do if you’re a moody scatterbrain drawn to both types of substances as an aversion to self, sobriety, and society? Meditate? How on earth are you suppose to get on the cushion? Thanks for your lifesaving help! Keep up the awesome work. Ricky — Listening to her talk about comedy I thought how sad that you’ll never interview Robin Williams. The two of you would have made one hell of an episode. I cuss like a goddamned sailor and have for decades. Fuck is a standard – I probably say it 25+ times a day (albeit often in my head or under my breath). But my favorite HAS to be cunt. It makes me laugh because it’s the one men are most often to whip out when they’re über pissed and really just want the argument to end by forcing the “girl” to go batshit insane and lose her shit. Since I know that’s what they’re going for, I know that’s the end of THEIR arguments and that, basically, I’ve won. Honestly, though, I don’t remember the last time anyone called me one so I must be less of a cunt than I used to be! Abdias Ernesto — Interview suggestions: Ray Kurzweil / Howard Bloom / Stephen Pressfield Jason Brabson — My favorite by far is stolen from the great Hunter S Thompson … “Oh, you bastard!” “Oh, you bastards” Works on multiple levels. Linguistically it’s extremely versatile.	cc/2019-30/en_middle_0059.json.gz/line1953
__label__cc	0.509085	0.490915	NATO Signals No New Members for the Present Faced with a newly aggressive Russia, NATO has been mulling how to react, but it is ruling out one option: rapid expansion. Extend NATO’s Umbrella to Montenegro and Macedonia In reacting to Moscow's aggression in Ukraine, President Obama has reassured exposed NATO members Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia of firm U.S. support Why Expanding NATO would Deter Russia, Stabilize Europe At a time when NATO is facing a period of tensions and confrontation along its borders, does enlargement help or hurt the Alliance? Webcast: Montenegro’s Moment: Moving Forward with NATO Please join us on Tuesday, April 8 from 5:00 to 6:00 p.m. for a discussion with H.E. Milo Đukanović the Prime Minister of Montenegro. Prime Minister: Montenegro Expects Invitation to Join NATO in September Montenegro's Prime Minister Milo Djukanovic is optimistic about his country's chances of receiving an invitation to join NATO in Wales at the September 2014 NATO summit. He praised US support for Montenegro's ambition during his speech at the Atlantic Council on April 8. Djukanovic said that his country is in an "encouraging place," and noted that it has "fulfilled all realistic expectations" required thus far in order to be accepted as a full NATO member state. He pointed to progress made on the seven negotiating chapters that have been opened, including the chapters with the most complex requirements.	cc/2019-30/en_middle_0059.json.gz/line1961
__label__cc	0.511498	0.488502	by Jennifer Tribe \| November 16, 2017 Getting a Grip on Your MSP Business – FMSP006 Today we’re going to talk about something called EOS: the Entrepreneurial Operating System. My guest is Mike Paton, the visionary for EOS Worldwide. I say visionary because it’s a formal role in the EOS system, and it means he’s senior leadership. Mike is also the co-author of Get a Grip, which is a follow-up to the original EOS book called Traction. On a side note, I used to co-own a publishing consultancy that helped authors self-publish books about their area of expertise. One of the first books we ever worked on was Traction. or find us in your favorite podcast app [02:54] CNN Travel featured an interesting story about VR theme parks in Japan. [03:19] They’re using HTC Vives and Oculus Rifts to offer a full VR experience. [03:50] At the North East Immersive Labs they have a hub that demonstrates all of the new augmented technology. [04:19] There were also interesting business cases including a virtual art gallery. [05:01] People were purchasing art and it was impressive. [05:37] VR seems like a gimmick until you try it with some of the better equipment. [06:01] VR drones where it looks like you’re in the drone flying. [07:09] How long before they do away with the headsets as thing evolve. [08:02] VR, AI, and AR are going to leap into the business world. It wasn’t that long ago that video calling was thought of as a gimmick. [08:40] Getting augmented reality to enhance tech support. [09:14] We are already seeing remote surgeries and VR. [09:34] The BBC has launched an interactive story called The Inspection Chamber. [10:06] It’s amazing that something can analyze your voice and pick out the funniest thing you’ve said. [10:40] It’s like a Choose Your Own Adventure story for the 21st century. [11:42] This may be a fun gimmick, but it will have business implications in the future. Interview: Getting a Grip on Your Business Mike Paton, EOS Worldwide [14:27] I’m talking to Mike Paton and we’re talking about getting MSPs unstuck so they love their work again. [14:49] Paton and Gino Wickman have co-authored Get a Grip as a follow-up book to Traction. [15:18] EOS or the Entrepreneurial Operating System is a set of simple practical tools to help entrepreneurs get more out of their business. [15:47] Patons says you can’t run a great business on multiple operating systems. You have to choose one. [16:12] They help people get better at vision, traction, and being healthy and cohesive. [16:52] Business owners often get stuck. [17:20] They work with the management team to get unstuck by working with the six components of business. [17:57] Quick gains can increase confidence. [19:08] IT service providers that are ideal for EOS are growth-oriented, open-minded… and a little stuck. [19:46] Get a Grip was written about an IT service provider. [20:34] Paton’s goal is to increase the value of the business and help the owner regain control of running the business. [21:27] Six components of a business: vision, people, data, issues, process, and traction. All need to be strengthened. [22:48] 82% of clients report their biggest source of frustration is people, but the focus needs to be on all six. [23:52] Defining what a great person is for a certain organization. [24:48] First steps to implementing EOS can be found on the EOS Worldwide website. There are also local EOS implementers that MSPs can connect with. Links from this episode How VR Theme Parks Are Changing Entertainment in Japan Sunderland Software City Immersive Labs Opens in Gateshead BBC Launches Interactive Voice Drama for Amazon Alexa Devices Chris Ducker Youpreneur Summit TotallyMSP Karl Palachuk: Small Biz Thoughts Karl Palachuk (Twitter) Richard Tubb: Tubblog Richard Tubb (Twitter) Get a Grip: An Entrepreneurial Fable by Gino Wickman and Mike Paton Traction: Get a Grip on your Business by Gino Wickman Other EOS books EOS Worldwide EOS Implementer Directory Mike Paton (LinkedIn) Like what you hear? Subscribe on iTunes to have each fresh episode delivered direct. Listen on YouTube	cc/2019-30/en_middle_0059.json.gz/line1969
__label__cc	0.549428	0.450572	Scoop: Snap hires Laura Nichols to lead comms for policy and content 10 hours ago / World Alan Amici May 15, 2019 Advanced ethernet could safeguard AVs against network delays Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios The current generation of in-vehicle networks cannot support the amount of data that will be required for AVs to make decisions in real time. One potential solution could be drastically improved automotive ethernet, a network for cars adapted from computers. Why it matters: Wireless networks could offer some advantages in internal and external AV communication, but AVs cannot rely on a network with any chance of experiencing a delay, making wired networks the safest bet. What’s needed: Cars with semi-autonomous features currently have networks speeds ranging from 500 kilobits per second to 1 megabit per second — but fully autonomous cars will require networks capable of speeds approaching 10-20 gigabits per second. What's happening: Automotive ethernet systems currently use copper wiring. As copper is relatively inexpensive to deploy and maintain, OEMS are squeezing as much performance as possible from improved copper-based systems. Currently, automotive ethernet can support network speeds of around 1 Gbps, 1,000 times faster than what is currently available in today’s cars. Network speeds of more than 10 Gbps are expected in the next two years, which would enable the real-time decision making required by AVs for at least the next 8-10 years. After this timeframe, it is likely that advances in AVs will demand even higher speeds, and will require a new solution to be found. Yes, but: Even as OEMs explore sophisticated new internal networks, they are hoping to reduce the amount of wiring in cars as part of a broader effort to reduce vehicle weights, improve fuel economy and increase the range of electric vehicles. Today's cars contain an average of around 1,500 copper wires, totaling about 1 mile in length. Advanced ethernet networks will need to do more with less. One other challenge associated with copper wiring is its susceptibility to electromagnetic interference, electrical noise that can interfere with data networks. This has been addressed for the current speeds of today's automotive ethernet systems, but as network speeds increase, the industry will need to address this. The bottom line: As AVs require increasingly fast network speeds, the next generation of automotive ethernet technology could be a huge boon for AV development. Alan Amici is vice president and CTO for transportation solutions at TE Connectivity, a supplier of automotive sensors and data systems.	cc/2019-30/en_middle_0059.json.gz/line1971
__label__wiki	0.822146	0.822146	Axios AM + More Issues By Mike Allen Good Thursday morning. Situational awareness: "Apartment rents in Manhattan fell the most in almost four years as landlords made deeper price cuts to lure tenants in a market brimming with choices." Median rent last month: $3,295. (Bloomberg) 1 big thing: #MeToo sweeps states State lawmakers who resigned after being accused of sexual misconduct or harassment (from top left, row by row): Alaska Rep. Dean Westlake, California Assemblyman Matt Dababneh and Florida Sen. Jack Latvala. Middle row: Mississippi Rep. John Moore, Nevada Sen. Mark Manendo and Oklahoma Rep. Dan Kirby. Bottom row: Oklahoma Sen. Ralph Shortey, Oklahoma Sen. Bryce Marlatt and South Dakota Rep. Mathew Wollmann. (AP) As the state legislative season begins, the #MeToo revolution is cleaning up state capitals. Early in my career, I covered state legislatures in Richmond and Hartford. All winter, up-and-coming lawmakers are thrown together with young staff and ambitious lobbyists for weeks at time of boozy nights far from home. That's a lot of bad behavior. In the past year, at least 14 legislators in 10 states (list) have resigned from office following accusations of sexual harassment or misconduct, AP found in a state-by-state review: "At least 16 others in more than a dozen states have faced other repercussions, such as the voluntary or forced removal from legislative leadership positions." AP's David Lieb writes from Jefferson City, Mo, that "a majority of state legislatures across the country are considering strengthening sexual harassment policies that have gone unheeded or unchanged for years." "[A]bout a third of all legislative chambers do not require lawmakers to receive training about what constitutes sexual harassment, how to report it and what consequences it carries." Be smart: The #MeToo revolution — including more scandals, and debate over new workplace norms — is just beginning. One front that has gotten zero attention, but will: staff behavior on Capitol Hill. P.S. "NPR reported ... that James Rosen, a former Washington correspondent who left Fox News last month, had done so after the network began scrutinizing sexual misconduct allegations against him. And Joel Achenbach, a Washington Post reporter, received a 90-day suspension ... for unspecified misconduct involving current and former female colleagues." (N.Y. Times) 2. Virtual assistants and car tech dominate CES An intelligent vision robot plays Scrabble at the Industrial Technology Research Institute booth at CES. (David Becker/Getty Images) The single biggest development at this year's big consumer electronics show in Vegas was an escalation of the battle between Google and Amazon to get their voice assistants built into all manner of tech gear, Axios' Ina Fried reports from the Strip: Google had its name splashed on booths, billboards and monorails, while Amazon had its own slew of banners and announcements. The other big trend: Cars. CES has become a big show for the auto industry over the years, but this year, car tech, especially that of the self-driving variety, was one of the biggest themes of the year, second only to the race between Amazon's Alexa and Google's Assistant. Ina's takeaways. Follow our live coverage from Vegas. 3. Stat du jour Toyota Motor Corp. president Akio Toyoda speaks during a news conference yesterday in Montgomery, Ala. (Albert Cesare/The Montgomery Advertiser via AP) Toyota's announcement yesterday of Alabama as the home for a shared factory with Mazda puts foreign car makers on pace to pass Detroit in U.S. production, per Wall Street Journal front page: The stat: "In the first quarter of 2018, foreign makers are expected to produce 1.4 million vehicles in the U.S., WardsAuto.com projects, equaling their American rivals for the first time." Why it matters: GM, Ford and Fiat Chrysler "are likely see their dominance in vehicle production entirely evaporate as rivals such as Toyota and Mercedes-Benz boost their American workforces and add new factories." "Already, the Big 3 are being outsold by non-U.S. rivals, as their share of American sales dwindled to 44% in 2017." 4. Hundreds hunt for mudslide victims Aerial photo shows mudflow and damage to homes in Montecito, Calif. (Matt Udkow/Santa Barbara County Fire Department via AP) With at least 17 dead and hundreds trapped in California mudslides, crews search from the air and dig through a deluge of debris, per L.A. Times. What happened: "Santa Barbara County officials chose not to send an emergency alert to cellphones warning of mudslides until destructive flooding had already begun in Montecito ... [T]he downpour was much worse than anticipated." "The message, similar to an Amber Alert for abducted children, was sent about 3:50 a.m. Tuesday to all registered cellphones in areas that were under voluntary and mandatory evacuations." Why it matters: "Deadly natural disasters in California over the last few months have sparked debate over how best to warn the public about an impending safety threat." "More than 40 people died in October when fires swept through wine country. Some residents said they got little or no warning, in part because Sonoma County decided not to use the cellphone bulletins." Go deeper ... The Wall Street Journal has a more sympathetic take for government: "Many Ignored Evacuation Orders Before Mudslides." Bonus pic Debris from a mudslide buries a home in Montecito, Calif. 5. Axios interview: BP CEO Bob Dudley BP CEO Bob Dudley in Iraq in 2013 (Marwan Ibrahim/AFP/Getty Images) BP CEO Bob Dudley showed a muted appetite for pursuing drilling in new areas off America’s coasts, in an interview with Axios' Amy Harder: Why it matters: Dudley's comments throw cold water on the idea oil companies are going to jump on drilling new wells off America’s coasts in response to the Trump administration proposal to open up almost all federal waters to new leasing. The reality is more complicated — and less compelling — than top administration officials have made it seem as they pursue Trump’s “energy dominance” agenda. Dudley, who's based in London: “For us, we’ve got a very full plate in the United States ... We don’t have a plan that says, ‘Here’s what we’re interested in,’ because we have prioritized a lot of activity, including reducing exploration and the size of the company.” Drill down. 6. House GOP at odds with Trump on border "House Republicans stepped forward ... with a [hardline] vision of immigration policy that clashed fiercely with President Trump’s recent overtures of bipartisanship and highlighted how difficult it will be ... to reach accord in the coming weeks," the N.Y. Times writes in its lead story: Why it matters: "[T]he House proposal [more expansive than what Trump has outlined] highlighted the uncertainty surrounding negotiations that are supposed to coalesce before the government runs out of money on Jan. 19." "Trump’s positions vacillate daily. And members of both parties are divided. Some Democrats are pressing for confrontation, while others seem to fear a political backlash. Some Republicans are searching for compromise against a conservative tide of anti-immigrant fervor." N.Y. Times Quote of the Day ... Francis Madi, 28, who was brought to the United States from Venezuela in 2003, on the tension she and other “Dreamers” feel as they watch their fate being debated: “It’s like watching a telenovela. Every day is different. Now we’re just going to the stressful part of the telenovela where you wonder what will happen to the protagonist.” 7. Retirements fuel GOP fear of losing House "Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) ... became the latest GOP veteran to announce that he would not seek reelection, two days after his fellow California Republican, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Edward R. Royce, said he would retire," the WashPost writes on the front page: Why it matters: Democrats had placed both men high on their midterm target lists, and key congressional forecasters immediately moved their seats to likely Democratic pickups." Ominous math for GOP: "At least 29 House seats held by Republicans will be open in November; only 22 GOP seats were open in 2006, and 19 Democratic seats in 2010. The 1994 'Republican revolution' that swept the GOP into power after decades of Democratic rule saw 27 Democratic retirements." How it's playing ... L.A. Times, top of column 1, "A blue wave may be forming in West: Departure of Issa and Royce suggests Democrats’ hopes for retaking Congress may begin in California." 8. Quote du jour Courtesy The Economist Shot ... President Trump, greeting reporters in the Cabinet Room, site of Tuesday's 54-minute, on-camera immigration negotiating session: "Welcome back to the studio. Nice to have you. (Laughter.)" Chaser ... Trump, in the same session, which was the first Cabinet meeting of the New Year: "[W]e are going to take a strong look at our country’s libel laws so that when somebody says something that is false and defamatory about someone, that person will have meaningful recourse in our courts. If somebody says something that’s totally false and knowingly false, that the person that has been abused, defamed, libeled will have meaningful recourse." "Our current libel laws are a sham and a disgrace, and do not represent American values or American fairness. So we’re going to take a strong look at that. We want fairness. You can’t say things that are false — knowingly false — and be able to smile as money pours into your bank account. We’re going to take a very, very strong look at that. And I think what the American people want to see is fairness." 9. Pyongyang ♥️ Michael Wolff Courtesy TIME A North Korean newspaper — Rodong Sinmun, run by its ruling Workers' Party — says the popularity of Michael Wolff's book reflects "rapidly surging anti-Trump sentiments in the international community," and "foretells Trump's political demise." (AP) On the Jan 21. N.Y. Times Best Sellers list, "Fire and Fury" debuts at #1 in two nonfiction categories: Print Hardcover, and Combined Print & E-Book. NPD BookScan said "Fire and Fury" sold 29,000 hardcover copies in its first weekend (sales through Saturday, after going on sale last Friday). 10. To tell your kids: 1 far thing Illustration: Rebecca Zisser / Axios AI is helping astronomers study the vast universe — fast, Axios science editor Alison Snyder writes: What's happening: The next generation of powerful telescopes will scan millions of stars and generate massive amounts of data that astronomers will be tasked with analyzing. AI will help them sift. Why it matters: Algorithms have helped astronomers for a while, but recent advances in AI — especially image recognition and faster, more inexpensive computing power —mean the techniques can be used by more researchers." Slip the surly bonds of earth. Thank you for reading. See you all day in the Axios stream ...	cc/2019-30/en_middle_0059.json.gz/line1972
__label__wiki	0.76811	0.76811	Tag: nepotism Briefingsdiplomacydmzforeign policyivanka trumpnepotismnorth korea On July 1, 2019 July 2, 2019 By gram Ivanka Trump and the Embarrassing Amateurism of the Trump Family Foreign Policy We begin with the video released by the French government which has gone viral of Ivanka Trump gate-crashing a private conversation between world leaders Prime Minister May, President Macron, Prime Minister Trudeau and the head of the IMF Christine Lagarde at the G-20 meeting, where Ivanka interjects with an inane comment that clearly puzzles and annoys the huddle causing them to disperse. Ambassador Cynthia Schneider, a professor of diplomacy at Georgetown University who served as U.S. Ambassador to The Netherlands joins us to discuss this case of nepotism gone wild as Trump places his daughter on the American side of the negotiating table opposite Xi Jinping and has her stepping into North Korea with him in what Ivanka describes as a surreal moment We will assess whether a majority of the American people will be sufficiently outraged by the embarrassing amateurism of this crass, classless and clueless family representing the United States abroad to vote them all off the island in 2020. Furthermore just the cost of the VIP accommodations for Trump’s adult children in London recently when they all visited the queen which set back the American taxpayer for $1,223,230, should surely get the attention of the American people, at least not those in the Fox News bubble. According to a Fox News Host, Leading a Country “Means Killing People” Then we speak with Adele Stan, a journalist based in Washington D.C. who is currently the editor of Right Wing Watch and a columnist at The American Prospect where she has an article “Trump and Bannon: Busting Up the World”. She joins us to discuss the latest book by Michael Wolff in which Wolff’s main source Stephen Bannon dismisses Ivanka and her husband Jared Kushner as “a pair of grifters”. However the president’s daughter and son-in-law together nevertheless play an increasing prominent role in American diplomacy as major players in Trump’s family-style approach to foreign policy. We also respond to remarks by Fox News host Tucker Carlson on Sunday on Fox & Friends where he defended Trump’s praise for the North Korean dictator, saying part of leading a country “means killing people”. Was There Some Substance Beyond the Photo Op on the DMZ? Then finally we get an assessment of whether there was some substance beyond the photo op and the Trump family grandstanding on the DMZ with Kim Jong-un and speak with Stephen Noerper, the Korea Society senior director for policy at Columbia University who is a former State Department senior analyst and fellow at Korea’s Institute for Foreign Affairs and National Security. He joins us to discuss Trump’s apparent comfort hanging out with despots at the G-20 and his “love” for the cruel young North Korean dictator with possibly the worst human rights record in the world.	cc/2019-30/en_middle_0059.json.gz/line1973
__label__wiki	0.774505	0.774505	GAME PREVIEW: Condors v Ontario April 13, 2019 /in News & Releases /by condors CONDORSTOWN, Calif. – The division-leading Bakersfield Condors host the Ontario Reign on Dignity Health Home Ice at Rabobank Arena at 7 p.m. Bakersfield can clinch its first-ever AHL Pacific Division title with a win over Ontario or a San Jose regulation loss to Colorado. It is Fan Appreciation Night with EVERYONE winning and thousands of prizes. Doors open at 4:45 p.m. for the Craft Beer Tasting and 3-on-3 Alumni Clash. Great seats start at $12 ($13 day of game) and are on sale by clicking here, or at the Rabobank Arena box office (opens at noon). PROMOTION DETAILS: Limited tickets remain for the Craft Beer Tasting featuring seven local breweries. They are just $10 and on sale here (you must have a game ticket). The Alumni 3-on-3 clash will begin at 5 p.m. (a game ticket gets you in). The first 5,000 fans will receive a free 32 oz. popcorn. Mystery envelopes of fun are on sale (1 for $10, 3 for $20) with every envelope containing a prize! Prizes include playoff tickets, jerseys, game worn jerseys, hats, jackets, food, and more! One lucky fan will receive 2 tickets to EVERY event at Rabobank Arena for a year. Alumni jerseys and Condors warmup jerseys will be available via silent auction on the concourse. Presented by Eyewitness News, 97.3 The Bull, and Three-Way Chevrolet. Please allow extra time for arrival as Rabobank Arena has installed metal detectors at all entrances. Doors open at 4:45 p.m. tonight with the Craft Beer Tasting and Alumni 3-on-3 Clash WATCH AHLTV Roasted Broccoli Prime Rib Sandwich BARS! Crossbar Craft Beer Pub Ice Level Lounge (free with any ticket, must be 21+) DOWNLOAD THE CONDORS APP: iTunes \|Google Play The Bakersfield Condors host the Ontario Reign in the 10th of 10 matchups on the season. The Condors are 7-1-1 against the Reign and have points in six straight games in the series (5-0-1). It is the final home game of the regular season for Bakersfield and the final game of the season for Ontario. Bakersfield picked up its 40th win of the season on Wednesday, 4-3 over the Tucson Roadrunners. RW Josh Currie recorded a natural hat trick in the second period, C Cooper Marody had three assists, and LW Tyler Benson had two assists. G Shane Starrett earned his 26th win of the season with 29 saves. Ontario closed out the home portion of their schedule with a 4-2 loss to Stockton last night. 40 BAGGER The Condors won their 40th game of the season on Wednesday for the first time in their AHL history. In the four seasons of the 68-game schedule, the 2015-16 Ontario Reign hold the record for wins in a season with 44. SEEING DOUBLE Two Condors earned multiple year-end awards from the AHL this week. LW Tyler Benson and G Shane Starrett each were named to the AHL All-Rookie Team and Second All-Star Team. THAT’S THE TRICK RW Josh Currie pulled in to a tie for the team lead in goals with 27 after a natural hat trick in the second period on Wednesday. It was his second hat trick of the season and his sixth hat trick in three seasons. SECOND HELPINGS The Condors have scored 104 goals in the second period this season. No other team has scored more than 90 goals in ANY period. CONDORS NOTES C Cooper Marody had three assists on Wednesday. It was his sixth, three-point game of the season. He is third in the AHL rookie scoring race. His +32 is fifth in the AHL and second among rookies… LW Tyler Benson is tied for 6th in the AHL in scoring and is second in the rookie race in scoring..The Condors power play is t-5th in the AHL at 20.6%. REIGN NOTES G Peter Budaj announced his retirement last night following the game against Stockton. Originally drafted in 2001 by Colorado, he played in 367 NHL games from 2005-2019. 4/9 – G Stuart Skinner assigned to Bakersfield 4/7 – C Brad Malone assigned to Bakersfield 4/7 – LW Joe Gambardella assigned to Bakersfield 4/5 – RW Josh Currie assigned to Bakersfield SEASON REWIND: Ethan BearJuly 11, 2019 - 8:42 am 2019-20 Schedule ReleasedJuly 10, 2019 - 12:11 pm Condors Announce Home OpenerJuly 9, 2019 - 11:03 am SEASON REWIND: Caleb JonesJuly 3, 2019 - 10:09 am Oilers sign Tomas JurcoJuly 1, 2019 - 11:48 am HOLTY’S BLOG: THE KID LINENovember 8, 2018 - 2:07 pm HOLTY’S BLOG: ONE MONTH INNovember 1, 2018 - 12:40 pm HOLTY’S BLOG: LOOK AT THE NUMBERSOctober 25, 2018 - 9:50 am Benson & Starrett named to AHL Second All-Star Team Coors Light Countdown \| Condors v Ontario	cc/2019-30/en_middle_0059.json.gz/line1974
__label__cc	0.745356	0.254644	Ballparks of America was created by three baseball Dads who wanted to bring back the joy of baseball and its power to bring friends and family closer together and create lifetime memories. We offer a baseball experience like life in the Majors, with one of the only residential clubhouses in the nation for baseball kids. allparks of America delivers a Big League experience to last a lifetime. You’ll arrive at a campus off the legendary Highway 76 Corridor . With Detroit Stadium to your right, you’ll make your way down to our registration center. While coaches check in their teams, players are free to explore the pro shop for souvenir caps, shirts and other gift mementos. From there, your tour through our facility is a trek through the history of baseball. You’ll never forget your first look at the open archway into St. Louis Stadium, the ivy of Chicago Field, the Little Monster at Boston Park, or Brooklyn Field brought back to life. This is where the magic begins. Opening Day is filled with pageantry as teams assemble outside of St. Louis, announced by dignitaries as they parade onto the field in front of their many fans. Later plans for opening ceremonies include concerts from one of Branson’s many A-list musical acts, and possible appearances from guest MLB players. Players spend a week rooming with their friends, waking up in their team’s private Major League-style suite, eating meals together, taking swings at our practice facilities, and preparing to face some of the best youth baseball teams from across the country. Then the games begin. The thud of a fastball, the scramble to catch a shot to short center, the frenzy of a dugout celebration, the bang of a home run off the signature red roofs. The week is a rush of memories. From the friendliness and care of the staff and community, to the friendships formed in the clubhouse to the experience of walking on to the premium fields as your name is called at an iconic stadium, to the family adventures at one of America’s greatest vacation destinations, you’ll dream big and make lifetime memories with friends and family. Each suite houses up to 18 with a semi-private sleeping area for coaches, complete with air conditioning, HDTV, and charging stations. Our 850 SF Team Suites are fashioned after real MLB clubhouses, allowing players and coaches to room together like the pros. The ultimate symbol of challenge, teamwork, and achievement. This memorable coin is awarded to players on both championship-winning team and runner up. Private Showers Suites provide lockers, a TV lounge area and private showers like the Big Leagues. The Ultimate Team Environment Suites provide the perfect place for team bonding and preparing players for the next big game. From AA to Elite, play teams from all across the country, facing competition at your level. The week begins with a parade of teams onto the beautiful St. Louis Field to the sounds of cheering crowds and team introductions by dignitaries. Teams showcase their skills in multiple challenges, including Around the Horn and the Team Relay, providing players an opportunity to warm up, and for coaches to scout their competition. Collect pins from Teams and build friendships with players from across the country. Chicago Field is the stage for Tuesday night’s Home Run Derby, an all-star jamboree under the lights. Every Wednesday is your free day to chill and experience Branson, one of America’s vacation capitals, with friends and family. Every player and coach receives a swag bag featuring a premium Ballparks of America hat, shirt, water bottle and hundreds of dollars in discounts to area attractions Want to experience Ballparks of America? Choose your dates and make your team’s dream tournament a reality. See what everyone’s talking about Download the Ballparks of America Tournament Info Packet 8U9U10U11U12U13U14U Tournament Year* Select The Option That Best Describes You* I'm a Player I'm a Coach I'm an Administrator See Why BOA is the Best Value Tournament in the Country! As a coach of these young men and a father of one of the players, I can’t thank you enough for the experience that your staff and venue created for myself and the boys. The opportunities throughout the week gave me a chance to have so many meaningful conversations with kids, coaches, parents, etc. and share moments in winning and losing that were impactful for all of us. My relationship with my son grew even closer than it already was, and my team can’t wait to start their fall season, due in large part to the closeness we gained at Ballparks of America. While each team wanted to beat one another and compete at a high level, there was a “family” feel about the whole week, and that feeling isn’t accidentally created by itself. Aaron Holst The experience I had at your ballparks was one of the favorite things I’ve ever done. I really loved playing on the “MLB” fields and using wood bats. One thing you could do is get a little shop on the property that sells equipment for players. Reid Plum 13U Player I would like to say how much fun it was being able to play on replica fields of major league fields. One of the best parts was being able to play in the rain and win the tournament while using a wood bat. Also giving us free passes to white water the place was super fun on the off day I had. Sawyer Allen Thank you for an amazing week. My favorite part was that the fields were short so we can hit homeruns. My favorite memory is that I hit four home runs and that my team won the tournament. I hope that in the future you guys will build more fields so that older kids can play. Palmer Holst I really enjoyed playing and staying at Ballparks of America. It was great to play on some really nice turf fields and playing on a fields that resembled the MLB. Some of my most memorable moments were being able to team bond with the guys, such as playing games in the hallway, go carting and just being able to hang out with everyone on site throughout the day and night and my homerun on Wrigley Field! I really got a chance to know my players outside of baseball and had a really good time. The occasion went fast and I liked the fact that the Park is located in Branson Missouri where there is lots to do. All together my experience with Ballparks of America was awesome. Chris Todd I really liked Ballparks of America because of the dorms, replicas of major league stadiums, and it was very close to all the popular things like go-carts, mini-golf, late night BP, and homerun derby. The dorms were also one of the best parts of the experience. It was a friendship builder and a very cool way to hang out with your teammates. I also loved late night BP because we were on some of the coolest replica fields in the world and you could rob some dingers. Also, the homerun derby was awesome, although I wasn’t in it, I was allowed to shag balls. It was incredible being on Wrigley Field! I wanted to send this note so that you guys could know how good of a job you are doing and how much I loved it. Bryson Oots Thank you for a good experience that I will not forget. I enjoyed playing on the fields that looked like real MLB parks. They were the nicest fields I have every played on. I also liked staying in the dorms with my friends. I really liked being able to take batting practice on the fields late under the lights. Tuesday night’s home run derby was cool. My favorite part of the week was playing with wood bats. Drake Miller Wall of “As an organization, we try to take a different end-of-the-year trip every year, but this is the one place I’d want to come back to.” -Chuck Ray, East Diamond Dawgs CoachSummer 2017 “This place has got it head and shoulders above everywhere else.” -Jay Smith, East Diamond Dawgs CoachSummer 2017 Branson, MO: The Best Family Value Vacation in the U.S. (Trivago)Vacation Former MLB Pitcher Jamie Moyer on Ballparks of America ExperienceTournament Experience Cal Ripken Major/70 World Series 2017 Champs, Team JapanSummer 2017 Back to School Bash 13U ChampsSummer 2017 “They would go out on the fields at night after the games were finished and get a wiffle ball or ultimate frisbee game going and play until we made them come in. The park would just leave the lights on the fields on so they could do these things.” – Doug Kampschroeder, CoachSummer 2017 “Awesome little touches like having music playing during pregame warmups, also in between innings and pitching changes, as well as announcing the hitters made my team feel like MLB players for a week. For me as a coach, it gave me the same feeling.” – Charlie Hagelskamp, CoachSummer 2017 “Thank you for a good experience that I will not forget. I enjoyed playing on the fields that looked like real MLB parks. They were the nicest fields I have every played on.” – Drake Miller, PlayerSummer 2017 “The dorms were also one of the best parts of the experience. It was a friendship builder and a very cool way to hang out with your teammates.” – Bryson Oots, PlayerSummer 2017 Bring the Lumber Summer 2017 Recap VideoSummer 2017 Mike Sweeney Coach InterviewSummer 2017 12U Missouri Heat ChampsSummer 2017 “Some of my most memorable moments were being able to team bond with the guys, such as playing games in the hallway, go carting and just being able to hang out with everyone on site throughout the day and night and my homerun on Wrigley Field! I really got a chance to know my players outside of baseball and had a really good time.” – Chris Todd, PlayerTournament Experience “I would like to say how much fun it was being able to play on replica fields of major league fields. One of the best parts was being able to play in the rain and win the tournament while using a wood bat.” – Sawyer Allen, PlayerSummer 2017 “My relationship with my son grew even closer than it already was, and my team can’t wait to start their fall season, due in large part to the closeness we gained at Ballparks of America.” – Aaron Holst, CoachSummer 2017 “Better fields and suites than Cooperstown.” – Sonny Tusa, CoachSummer 2016 “This will be the mecca for youth baseball—the tournament that everybody wants to come to.” – Al Tusa, CoachSummer 2016 Houston Bengals Coach InterviewSummer 2016 Week #2 12U Winners: SWMO BombersSummer 2016 “This place shows you the entire history of the game in on place.” – Brian Kubik, CoachSummer 2016 “I will never forget my kid running out of the dorms and seeing the fields for the first time.” – C. Gerage, ParentSummer 2016 SWMO Bombers Coach InterviewSummer 2016 13U Bring the Lumber TournamentSummer 2016 “I loved watching my kid tell the others to have fun, knowing that he practiced what I preached” – Lori Rubenstein, ParentSummer 2016 Hoffman Stars 12U (Hoffman Estates, IL)Summer 2016 Week #1 12U Winners: Team Full Potential (Houston, TX)Summer 2016 Week #1 12U Silver Winners: Plainfield 66ers (Plainfield, IL)Summer 2016 Send us your favorite tournament pictures and join the wall of fame.	cc/2019-30/en_middle_0059.json.gz/line1975
__label__cc	0.583031	0.416969	http://www.barrons.com/articles/in-tech-sector-brace-for-a-lot-more-disappointment-1452927080 Technology Trader In Tech Sector, Brace for a Lot More Disappointment Tiernan Ray It’s time once again to play that thrilling investment game called global macroeconomic malaise, in which investors hunt for the least awful markets and the least damaged companies in which to park money. There are plenty of awful markets in technology at the moment, and the disappointment is just beginning to unfold for individual companies as this earnings season gets under way. Last Thursday chip giant Intel (ticker: INTC) reported results for its December-ended fourth quarter, which had been expected to be weak because of terrible personal-computer sales. Just two days before, research firm IDC estimated that shipments of computers in the holiday quarter had dropped 10.6%. Not many people, it seems, gave PCs as gifts. In fact, the quarterly decline was the worst ever recorded, according to IDC. But all that supposedly was already reflected in Intel’s stock price. Following the release of IDC’s report, a chorus of Wall Streeters declared that the shares actually would benefit from airing the bad news and moving on. Instead, following Intel’s Thursday earnings report, the chip maker’s shares fell 9% the next day. The surprise was in lower-than-expected sales of chips for server computers, the brains of the Internet and of corporate data centers. To top it all, Intel warned about weakness in consumption in China, with Chief Financial Officer Stacy Smith saying, “Our team on the ground in China has gotten fairly cautious about what’s going on in China right now.” EVEN WORSE THAN THE MARKET for personal computers and servers, supposedly, is the market for smartphones. Wall Street has been worrying for weeks that Apple ’s (AAPL) sales of its iPhone will come up short of expectations, even if they are still gargantuan in absolute dollar terms. And it isn’t just Apple: Its chief rival, Samsung Electronics (005930.Korea), seems to be in worse shape. It gave a deeply disappointing profit warning two weeks ago, in part because, as analyst Mehdi Hosseini of the boutique firm Susquehanna put it, Samsung’s phone business has “no clear strategy” after having had its clock cleaned by Apple the past two years. Both the victor and the vanquished went down together in this terrible mobile market: Apple stock has fallen almost 8% this year, though that’s better than the 10% drop in Samsung. Apple is scheduled to report results and offer its forecast for the March quarter on Jan. 26. The pain of Apple and Samsung was visited upon their suppliers. Wireless chip vendors Skyworks Solutions (SWKS) and Qorvo (QRVO) have been under pressure for weeks because Apple is a top customer. An ominous sign of what may be in store came in a report Thursday from Analog Devices (ADI), another Apple supplier. The company sharply cut its outlook for its January-ending quarter. Sure enough, this immediately was ascribed to Apple. At a respective nine and seven times next year’s predicted earnings, both Skyworks and Qorvo trade way below the market multiple, although I suspect they will be bid up after Apple’s earnings are released and the worst is in the open. The two companies face heightened competition from Qualcomm (QCOM), a much bigger chip manufacturer, but the ultimate result of that will be to put their own offerings in a brighter light. THERE ARE SOME SELF-INFLICTED WOUNDS this earnings season. GoPro (GPRO), the maker of action cameras that you can attach to your surf board or your dog, warned it would come up short of its revenue forecast in the holiday quarter. There was a lot of debate over whether GoPro is finally proving to be just a fad (to some extent, yes); whether it didn’t introduce new cameras fast enough to stoke demand (it seems that way, based on the company’s many price cuts); or whether, as my colleague Alexander Eule opined in this magazine, there is just too much competition from me-too camera makers (“Investing as an Extreme Sport,” Sept. 21). GoPro stock dropped 15% the day after the report was released, to $12.48. It’s down 76% over the past 12 months, and more than 50% below its price of $24 at GoPro’s initial public offering on June 26, 2014. All the theories mentioned above for the camera outfit’s troubles are potentially valid. But the simpler answer—one that no one wants to contemplate when a company is riding high—is that GoPro is a very young outfit that relies on a single product. You have to accomplish a lot, over many years, to prove that you have staying power, and GoPro hasn’t. AMID ALL THE CARNAGE, one Wall Street observer last week quietly laid out the contours of a gem of misery soon to emerge. It’s in the realm of cloud computing, which is populated by several dozen young software firms. Even though they have promising businesses, they face slowing growth and have high stock multiples. The observer in question, Brian Schwartz, an analyst with Oppenheimer & Co., reviewed the prospects and the valuations of 44 companies and found that their revenue growth will fall, on average, from 29% in the past 12 months to 25% in the next 12. The culprit: a general slowdown in global technology spending by companies. Although he is a big believer in cloud computing, Schwartz writes that “we are likely in the late innings of a long cycle of investors chasing performance.” As the group’s financial performance declines, he thinks, investor sentiment on the stocks may cool. Now, 25% sales growth is certainly enviable, but these are pricey issues, trading in some cases at hundreds of times projected earnings…if they have any profits at all. Schwartz measures them by a multiple of their enterprise value (market capitalization plus debt, minus cash), divided by their projected revenue. On that basis, he estimates, valuations recently have slid to 4.3 times, almost the lowest they’ve been in five years. Schwartz can’t help trying to salvage something of value in the group, and he names four stocks that might escape the carnage: Salesforce.com (CRM), Ellie Mae (ELLI), Instructure (INST), and Workday (WDAY). Despite Schwartz’s careful work, it is more likely that his broader observation will prove most apt, and that a world grappling with slowing growth will see the cloud vendors as merely the most overpriced tippy-top of a less and less attractive technology market. On that basis, investors may increasingly walk away from the cloud group, just as they abandon other parts of tech. TIERNAN RAY can be reached at: tiernan.ray@barrons.com, blogs.barrons.com/techtraderdaily or www.twitter.com/barronstechblog	cc/2019-30/en_middle_0059.json.gz/line1979
__label__wiki	0.721101	0.721101	BR Home Page > Teams > Franchise Encyclopedia > 1952 Statistics 1952 St. Louis Browns Statistics 1951 Season 1953 Season Record: 64-90, Finished 7th in American League (Schedule and Results) Pythagorean W-L: 64-90, 604 Runs, 733 Runs Allowed Managers: Rogers Hornsby (22-29) and Marty Marion (42-61) General Manager: Bill Veeck Ballpark: Sportsman's Park III Attendance: 518,796 (8th of 8) Park Factors: (Over 100 favors batters, under 100 favors pitchers.) Multi-year: Batting - 102, Pitching - 106 One-year: Batting - 98, Pitching - 100 More team info, park factors, postseason, & more St. Louis Browns Franchise Pages More 1952 Browns Pages Batting Splits Minor Lg Affiliates Pitching Splits Def. Lineups Want to know when we do something new? Around once a week we'll give you a quick update on all the things we've been up to. View a sample email. Become a Sports Reference Power User Recent Game Results Height of bar is margin of victory • Mouseover bar for details • Click for box score • Grouped by Month 1. Apr 15, SLB (1-0) beat DET, 3-0 4. Apr 18, SLB (4-0) beat CHW, 7-1 5. Apr 19, SLB (4-1) lost to CHW, 3-8 7. Apr 20, SLB (5-2) lost to CHW, 5-10 8. Apr 22, SLB (6-2) beat CLE, 8-3 10. Apr 26, SLB (7-3) lost to CHW, 0-5 13. Apr 30, SLB (8-5) beat NYY, 9-4 14. Apr 30, SLB (8-6) lost to NYY, 1-4 15. May 1, SLB (9-6) beat BOS, 6-1 16. May 2, SLB (9-7) lost to BOS, 6-13 17. May 3, SLB (9-8) lost to BOS, 2-5 18. May 4, SLB (9-9) lost to WSH, 1-2 19. May 4, SLB (9-10) lost to WSH, 7-15 21. May 6, SLB (10-11) beat PHA, 5-1 22. May 7, SLB (10-12) lost to PHA, 0-1 24. May 10, SLB (12-12) beat CLE, 6-4 25. May 11, SLB (12-13) lost to CLE, 0-1 27. May 13, SLB (12-15) lost to PHA, 1-5 28. May 14, SLB (13-15) beat PHA, 12-7 30. May 16, SLB (14-16) beat BOS, 2-1 32. May 18, SLB (16-16) beat NYY, 4-3 33. May 18, SLB (16-17) lost to NYY, 1-8 34. May 20, SLB (16-18) lost to WSH, 0-2 35. May 21, SLB (17-18) beat WSH, 2-1 41. May 26, SLB (18-23) lost to CHW, 2-6 43. May 28, SLB (19-24) beat CHW, 3-1 44. May 30, SLB (20-24) beat DET, 3-2 45. May 30, SLB (20-25) lost to DET, 5-8 46. Jun 2, SLB (20-26) lost to PHA, 1-2 47. Jun 3, SLB (21-26) beat WSH, 3-2 48. Jun 6, SLB (22-26) beat NYY, 9-3 49. Jun 7, SLB (22-27) lost to NYY, 1-2 52. Jun 10, SLB (23-29) beat BOS, 7-4 53. Jun 11, SLB (23-30) lost to BOS, 9-11 54. Jun 12, SLB (23-31) lost to BOS, 5-7 55. Jun 14, SLB (23-32) lost to PHA, 2-9 56. Jun 15, SLB (24-32) beat PHA, 6-3 61. Jun 20, SLB (27-33) tied WSH, 5-5 62. Jun 21, SLB (28-33) beat WSH, 7-3 63. Jun 22, SLB (28-34) lost to WSH, 5-8 65. Jun 23, SLB (29-35) lost to NYY, 10-14 66. Jun 24, SLB (29-36) lost to NYY, 3-8 67. Jun 25, SLB (30-36) beat NYY, 10-9 68. Jun 26, SLB (30-37) lost to DET, 0-6 69. Jun 27, SLB (31-37) beat DET, 2-1 72. Jul 1, SLB (32-39) lost to CLE, 3-4 74. Jul 3, SLB (32-41) lost to CHW, 3-12 75. Jul 4, SLB (32-42) lost to CHW, 1-3 77. Jul 5, SLB (32-44) lost to DET, 0-5 79. Jul 10, SLB (32-46) lost to NYY, 2-10 80. Jul 11, SLB (33-46) beat NYY, 6-3 81. Jul 12, SLB (33-47) lost to NYY, 4-5 82. Jul 13, SLB (33-48) lost to BOS, 5-8 84. Jul 14, SLB (34-49) beat BOS, 7-5 85. Jul 15, SLB (34-50) lost to PHA, 6-7 86. Jul 15, SLB (34-51) lost to PHA, 3-11 87. Jul 17, SLB (35-51) beat PHA, 9-5 89. Jul 18, SLB (35-53) lost to WSH, 5-6 100. Jul 28, SLB (40-59) beat WSH, 6-3 102. Jul 30, SLB (41-60) lost to WSH, 2-6 103. Jul 31, SLB (41-61) lost to WSH, 5-10 104. Aug 1, SLB (42-61) beat NYY, 2-1 105. Aug 2, SLB (43-61) beat NYY, 11-6 106. Aug 3, SLB (43-62) lost to NYY, 1-6 108. Aug 5, SLB (44-63) beat DET, 5-1 111. Aug 8, SLB (46-64) lost to CLE, 9-10 112. Aug 9, SLB (46-65) lost to CLE, 5-7 113. Aug 10, SLB (47-65) beat CLE, 6-3 114. Aug 12, SLB (48-65) beat CHW, 3-2 116. Aug 13, SLB (49-66) lost to CLE, 1-9 118. Aug 16, SLB (49-68) lost to DET, 2-5 119. Aug 17, SLB (50-68) beat DET, 4-2 121. Aug 19, SLB (50-70) lost to WSH, 1-2 123. Aug 21, SLB (51-71) beat WSH, 8-1 124. Aug 22, SLB (51-72) lost to PHA, 2-5 126. Aug 23, SLB (52-73) beat PHA, 12-11 127. Aug 24, SLB (52-74) lost to BOS, 1-2 128. Aug 24, SLB (52-75) lost to BOS, 1-12 129. Aug 26, SLB (52-76) lost to NYY, 3-6 130. Aug 27, SLB (52-77) lost to NYY, 7-12 133. Sep 1, SLB (54-78) lost to CLE, 3-9 134. Sep 1, SLB (55-78) beat CLE, 2-1 135. Sep 3, SLB (55-79) lost to CHW, 0-1 136. Sep 4, SLB (56-79) beat CHW, 8-0 140. Sep 9, SLB (57-82) beat NYY, 5-4 141. Sep 10, SLB (57-83) lost to NYY, 1-6 142. Sep 12, SLB (58-83) beat WSH, 5-4 143. Sep 14, SLB (58-84) lost to PHA, 5-10 144. Sep 14, SLB (58-85) lost to PHA, 1-2 145. Sep 16, SLB (58-86) lost to BOS, 7-11 146. Sep 17, SLB (59-86) beat BOS, 10-4 147. Sep 20, SLB (60-86) beat CHW, 9-6 149. Sep 21, SLB (61-87) lost to CHW, 1-4 150. Sep 23, SLB (62-87) beat DET, 3-1 152. Sep 25, SLB (63-88) lost to DET, 2-3 155. Sep 28, SLB (64-90) beat CHW, 12-1 Top 12 Players Please note that players may not be in the uniform of the correct team in these images. League Register C Clint Courtney* 25 119 458 413 38 118 24 3 5 50 0 2 39 26 .286 .349 .395 .743 105 163 9 1 5 4 1B Dick Kryhoski* 27 111 372 342 38 83 13 1 11 42 2 0 23 42 .243 .296 .383 .679 86 131 8 3 4 2 2B Bobby Young* 27 149 636 575 59 142 15 9 4 39 3 3 56 48 .247 .314 .325 .639 76 187 7 0 5 4 SS Joe DeMaestri 23 81 198 186 13 42 9 1 1 18 0 1 8 25 .226 .258 .301 .559 54 56 4 0 4 0 3B Jim Dyck 30 122 458 402 60 108 22 3 15 64 0 4 50 68 .269 .354 .450 .804 121 181 4 3 3 3 OF Jim Rivera* 30 97 371 336 45 86 13 6 4 30 8 7 29 59 .256 .319 .366 .685 88 123 3 2 4 1 OF Bob Nieman 25 131 533 478 66 138 22 2 18 74 0 4 46 73 .289 .352 .456 .808 122 218 14 1 8 3 OF Jim Delsing* 26 93 332 298 34 76 13 6 1 34 3 3 25 29 .255 .323 .349 .672 85 104 10 5 4 2 IF Fred Marsh 28 87 278 247 28 69 9 1 2 27 3 3 27 33 .279 .350 .348 .699 93 86 4 0 4 1 1B Gordon Goldsberry* 24 86 268 227 30 52 9 3 3 17 0 2 34 37 .229 .330 .335 .664 83 76 3 0 7 0 SS Marty Marion 35 67 210 186 16 46 11 0 2 19 0 2 19 17 .247 .320 .339 .659 82 63 6 1 4 0 3B Cass Michaels 26 55 190 166 21 44 8 2 3 25 1 0 23 16 .265 .354 .392 .746 105 65 3 0 1 1 OF Al Zarilla* 33 48 158 130 20 31 6 0 1 9 2 1 27 15 .238 .373 .308 .681 89 40 2 1 0 1 OF Vic Wertz* 27 37 154 130 22 45 5 0 6 19 0 0 23 20 .346 .444 .523 .968 166 68 2 0 1 2 3B Leo Thomas 28 41 146 124 12 29 5 1 0 12 2 0 17 7 .234 .336 .290 .626 74 36 4 2 3 1 C Les Moss 27 52 135 118 11 29 3 0 3 12 0 1 15 13 .246 .331 .347 .678 87 41 6 0 2 2 OF Jay Porter 19 33 115 104 12 26 4 1 0 7 4 0 10 10 .250 .316 .308 .623 72 32 4 0 1 1 C Darrell Johnson 23 29 89 78 9 22 2 1 0 9 0 0 11 4 .282 .371 .333 .704 95 26 2 0 0 0 OF Tom Wright* 28 29 78 66 6 16 0 0 1 6 1 1 12 20 .242 .359 .288 .647 80 19 2 0 0 1 OF George Schmees* 27 34 63 61 9 8 1 1 0 3 0 0 2 18 .131 .159 .180 .339 -7 11 0 0 0 0 UT Don Lenhardt 29 18 53 48 5 13 4 1 1 5 0 0 4 8 .271 .327 .458 .785 115 22 1 0 1 0 OF Ray Coleman* 30 20 52 46 5 9 3 0 0 1 0 0 5 4 .196 .288 .261 .549 52 12 0 1 0 1 OF Earl Rapp* 31 30 49 49 3 7 4 0 0 4 0 0 0 8 .143 .143 .224 .367 0 11 2 0 0 0 1B Hank Arft* 30 15 33 28 1 4 3 1 0 4 0 0 5 7 .143 .273 .321 .594 63 9 1 0 0 2 1B Roy Sievers 25 11 32 30 3 6 3 0 0 5 0 0 1 4 .200 .226 .300 .526 44 9 1 0 1 0 SS Willy Miranda# 26 7 15 11 2 1 0 1 0 1 0 0 3 1 .091 .286 .273 .558 54 3 0 0 1 0 OF Jake Crawford 24 7 12 11 1 2 1 0 0 0 1 0 1 5 .182 .250 .273 .523 44 3 0 0 0 0 MI Stan Rojek 33 9 9 7 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 0 .143 .333 .143 .476 35 1 1 0 0 0 2B Mike Goliat 30 3 5 4 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 .000 .200 .000 .200 -42 0 0 0 0 0 P Tommy Byrne* 32 40 89 84 9 21 5 1 1 12 0 0 5 18 .250 .292 .369 .661 81 31 1 0 0 1 P Duane Pillette 29 35 77 66 7 12 2 0 0 7 0 0 4 15 .182 .239 .212 .452 25 14 2 1 6 0 P Gene Bearden* 31 45 68 65 6 23 3 0 0 8 0 0 2 10 .354 .373 .400 .773 113 26 2 0 1 0 P Bob Cain* 27 35 67 58 7 8 0 1 0 1 0 0 4 14 .138 .194 .172 .366 1 10 1 0 5 0 P Ned Garver 26 24 54 49 5 9 2 0 0 5 0 0 3 8 .184 .245 .224 .470 30 11 0 1 1 0 P Satchel Paige 45 46 44 39 0 5 0 0 0 2 0 0 1 10 .128 .150 .128 .278 -23 5 1 0 4 0 P Earl Harrist 33 36 35 31 0 3 0 0 0 2 0 0 0 8 .097 .097 .097 .194 -47 3 0 0 4 0 P Dave Madison 31 31 19 17 0 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 6 .118 .118 .118 .235 -35 2 0 0 2 0 P Dick Littlefield* 26 7 16 16 1 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 6 .063 .063 .063 .125 -65 1 0 0 0 0 P Stubby Overmire 33 17 11 11 0 2 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 3 .182 .182 .273 .455 24 3 0 0 0 0 P Marlin Stuart* 33 12 7 6 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 .000 .143 .000 .143 -58 0 0 0 0 0 P Ken Holcombe 33 12 3 3 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 .333 .333 .333 .667 84 1 0 0 0 0 P Cliff Fannin* 28 11 2 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 .000 .500 .000 .500 46 0 1 0 0 0 P Johnny Hetki 30 3 2 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 .000 .500 .000 .500 46 0 1 0 0 0 P Bobby Hogue 31 8 2 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 .000 .000 .000 .000 -100 0 0 0 0 0 P Lou Sleater* 25 4 2 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 .000 .000 .000 .000 -100 0 0 0 0 0 P Hal Hudson* 25 3 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 .000 .000 .000 .000 -100 0 0 0 0 0 P Pete Taylor 24 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 P Bob Mahoney 24 3 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 Team Totals 27.5 155 6001 5353 604 1340 225 46 82 574 30 34 540 717 .250 .322 .356 .677 86 1903 112 22 86 33 Rank in 8 AL teams 2 6 3 2 3 6 7 1 8 6 6 6 5 5 4 7 Non-Pitcher Totals 27.2 155 5502 4901 569 1253 212 44 81 536 30 34 518 618 .256 .329 .366 .696 92 1796 103 20 63 32 Pitcher Totals 31.0 155 499 452 35 87 13 2 1 38 0 0 22 99 .192 .233 .237 .470 30 107 9 2 23 1 * - bats left-handed, # - bats both, else - bats right, ? - unknown; OPS_lg for OPS+ does not include pitchers. SO/W SP Duane Pillette 29 10 13 .435 3.59 30 30 0 9 1 0 205.1 222 94 82 14 55 0 62 7 0 2 880 109 3.58 1.349 9.7 0.6 2.4 2.7 1.13 SP Tommy Byrne* 32 7 14 .333 4.68 29 24 5 14 0 0 196.0 182 117 102 16 112 0 91 10 1 5 876 83 4.39 1.500 8.4 0.7 5.1 4.2 0.81 SP Bob Cain* 27 12 10 .545 4.13 29 27 2 8 1 2 170.0 169 79 78 15 62 0 70 2 0 1 718 95 3.84 1.359 8.9 0.8 3.3 3.7 1.13 SP Ned Garver 26 7 10 .412 3.69 21 21 0 7 2 0 148.2 130 67 61 14 55 0 60 4 1 1 614 106 4.00 1.244 7.9 0.8 3.3 3.6 1.09 CL Satchel Paige 45 12 10 .545 3.07 46 6 35 3 2 10 138.0 116 51 47 5 57 0 91 3 0 2 582 127 2.85 1.254 7.6 0.3 3.7 5.9 1.60 RP Gene Bearden* 31 7 8 .467 4.30 34 16 10 3 0 0 150.2 158 89 72 13 78 0 45 1 1 10 676 91 4.49 1.566 9.4 0.8 4.7 2.7 0.58 RP Earl Harrist 33 2 8 .200 4.01 36 9 13 1 0 5 116.2 119 61 52 7 47 0 49 10 0 1 506 97 3.80 1.423 9.2 0.5 3.6 3.8 1.04 RP Dave Madison 31 4 2 .667 4.38 31 4 12 0 0 0 78.0 78 46 38 7 48 0 35 4 0 2 357 89 4.66 1.615 9.0 0.8 5.5 4.0 0.73 RP Stubby Overmire* 33 0 3 .000 3.73 17 4 4 0 0 0 41.0 44 21 17 3 7 0 10 0 0 0 172 105 3.37 1.244 9.7 0.7 1.5 2.2 1.43 Dick Littlefield* 26 2 3 .400 2.72 7 5 2 3 0 0 46.1 35 18 14 4 17 0 34 0 0 0 190 144 3.15 1.122 6.8 0.8 3.3 6.6 2.00 Marlin Stuart 33 1 2 .333 4.15 12 2 7 0 0 1 26.0 26 18 12 3 9 0 13 0 0 0 113 95 3.93 1.346 9.0 1.0 3.1 4.5 1.44 Ken Holcombe 33 0 2 .000 3.86 12 1 6 0 0 0 21.0 20 10 9 1 9 0 7 0 0 0 89 103 3.63 1.381 8.6 0.4 3.9 3.0 0.78 Bobby Hogue 31 0 1 .000 2.76 8 1 3 0 0 0 16.1 10 5 5 1 13 0 2 0 0 0 70 145 5.33 1.408 5.5 0.6 7.2 1.1 0.15 Cliff Fannin 28 0 2 .000 12.67 10 2 2 0 0 0 16.1 34 25 23 5 9 0 6 0 0 2 85 31 7.29 2.633 18.7 2.8 5.0 3.3 0.67 Johnny Hetki 30 0 1 .000 3.86 3 1 1 0 0 0 9.1 15 7 4 2 2 0 4 0 0 0 45 105 4.96 1.821 14.5 1.9 1.9 3.9 2.00 Lou Sleater* 25 0 1 .000 7.27 4 2 0 0 0 0 8.2 9 8 7 1 5 0 1 0 1 0 40 56 5.39 1.615 9.3 1.0 5.2 1.0 0.20 Hal Hudson* 25 0 0 12.71 3 0 2 0 0 0 5.2 9 8 8 0 6 0 0 0 0 0 32 33 5.57 2.647 14.3 0.0 9.5 0.0 0.00 Bob Mahoney 24 0 0 18.00 3 0 2 0 0 0 3.0 8 6 6 0 4 0 1 0 0 0 21 24 5.72 4.000 24.0 0.0 12.0 3.0 0.25 Pete Taylor 24 0 0 13.50 1 0 1 0 0 0 2.0 4 3 3 0 3 0 0 0 0 0 11 35 6.89 3.500 18.0 0.0 13.5 0.0 0.00 George Schmees* 27 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0.0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 Team Totals 31.2 64 90 .416 4.12 155 155 107 48 6 18 1399.0 1388 733 640 111 598 0 581 41 4 26 6077 95 3.96 1.420 8.9 0.7 3.8 3.7 0.97 Rank in 8 AL teams 7 2 6 8 8 4 4 5 7 7 6 7 6 * - throws left-handed, # - throws both, else - throws right, ? - unknown, for minors bold indicates they appeared in majors Full-Season Roster & Games by Position Team Fielding--Totals Team Player Value--Batters WAR Explained (v2.2): 8+ MVP, 5+ A-S, 2+ Starter, 0-2 Sub, < 0 Repl Team Player Value--Pitchers You are here: BR Home Page > Teams > Franchise Encyclopedia > 1952 Statistics	cc/2019-30/en_middle_0059.json.gz/line1981
__label__cc	0.522197	0.477803	Home in other news News Woman str!ps her sister's husband's mistress naked in public and flogs her. Watch disturbing videos Woman str!ps her sister's husband's mistress naked in public and flogs her. Watch disturbing videos Adeola Sharon 4 Keenni A series of videos are going viral online, showing a woman flogging another woman after stripping her naked. In one of the videos, a woman, from Agulu, in Anambra state, can be seen flogging a naked woman while asking her if there weren't other single men around before she chose to have sex with a married man. "Shame on you. Woman who sleeps with other's husbands," she said as she flogged her. From the videos, it can be gathered that the naked woman slept with the other woman's sister's husband. In another video, the woman asked how many times she slept with her sister's husband and she said, "two times." She asked how much the man gives her and the naked woman said the man doesn't give her anything. After flogging her, she opened the gate and tried forcing her to leave the compound naked. A man quickly intervened and directed the naked woman back inside. In another video, the naked woman can be seen already tying a wrapper after a good Samaritan gave her one to cover her nakedness. But the other woman in orange top kept insisting that the woman removes the wrapper she's tying and go naked. "Let her remove the wrapper," she said repeatedly in Igbo. "Give me that wrapper." Others in the background begged the woman in orange carrying canes. "Aunty please," They all pleaded. Another woman begged her saying, "Should I kneel down for you? Aunty please." But the woman was not appeased. A man stepped into the scene to say, "We're all begging you." But the woman with the cane warned him saying, "Don't cover evil." The man replied: "Have mercy on her. Forgive her." Other voices in the background can also be heard pleading on behalf of the woman clad in only wrapper. But the woman insisted on punishing the nearly naked woman. She told her to kneel down and the woman obeyed. After the woman knelt down, the one with the cane turned to the others to ask who gave the woman a wrapper. She then proceeded to ask the girl again to remove the wrapper and go naked. "She knows what she did was not good," the others told the angry woman but she shut them up, asking them to "cool down." The woman kneeling begged for forgiveness but the woman with the cane refused to forgive her and insisted that she removes the wrapper to expose her naked body. When the lady refused to remove the wrapper, the woman began flogging her with a belt in her hand while threatening her and saying: "Your butt, is it better than my sister's butt? Your butt, is it better than my sister's own? "God will burn you," she added. She continued: "You said it's not today you started licking it. It's not today. Somebody's husband." After flogging her, she asked her to go home. Social media users have reacted with anger and asked why the woman didn't face the cheating husband. Others criticized the naked woman for letting herself get humiliated to that extent without fighting back. Watch the videos below. PH Content Creators@818tvonline What could she have done to deserve this? 00:06 - 21 Mar 2019 See PH Content Creators's other Tweets in other news, News Tolakeyboard 21 March 2019 at 15:19:00 GMT+1 Haha very funny I can't wait to see the video Chinwe Zika Okolo 21 March 2019 at 16:44:00 GMT+1 The woman in orange is a big fool honestly stripping a fellow woman like you naked. This does not stop the sister's husband from repeating such act nonsense Ajagbe Olufemi 21 March 2019 at 20:04:00 GMT+1 Na dem problem be that	cc/2019-30/en_middle_0059.json.gz/line1982
__label__wiki	0.724444	0.724444	Villa Ottelio Blog +393398651074 bbottelio@libero.it Via Torricelle 20 33040, Pradamano, Udine News and Events from Bed and Breakfast Villa Ottelio Welcome to our Garden B&B News News from B&B Race for Haiti Race for Haiti. Competitive and amateur cycling race. The 23rd edition of the Race for Haiti will be held on May 24, 2015. Where will it take place? In Pradamano, with departure and arrival from the Rubia Park. This year’s Race for Haiti is dedicated to the memory of the First World War. The race will lead first to Gorizia and then go through Pass Solarie and return to Pradamano, where there will be the official arrival. In this way we want to remember and honor the sacrifice of the many soldiers and civilians who spent their young lives for their country. Rubia Park Pradamano About a thousand cyclists are expected to join, along with their friends and families. We will also have the pleasure of hosting many sports journalists. The 23rd edition of the 2015 Race for Haiti has two tracks: the first reaches Podresca (near Castelmonte) and returns to Pradamano, has a length of 114 km and is meant for amateurs. The second one continues until Drenchia and then returns to Pradamano, has a length of 156 km and it’s for the competitive racers. The route departing from Rubia Park will be mostly on flat land until the surroundings of Cividale. In this first part, there are two slopes: the first at Rosazzo, and the second at St. Florian. The real climb starts in Podresca and will reach 753 m at Prapotniza. At this point, the amateur group will return to Pradamano. The other group will continue by going down to St. Leonardo before having a second slope up to 603 m in Trinvio. Upon reaching Trinvio, the group will head back to Pradamano. Origins of Race for Haiti. The Race for Haiti started in 1992 with the purpose of supporting projects in favor of the island of Haiti, in particular the project “Girls of the road”, through the charity “Pane Condiviso” and the mission of Sister Angela, who supports girls by providing education, food and accommodation. The island of Haiti in the Caribbean Sea We welcome you to Pradamano at Park Rubia on May 24, 2015 for this great sporting event. Villa Ottelio By: bbottelio@libero.it March 17, 2019 News from B&B bbottelio@libero.it Via Torricelle 20 33040, Pradamano, Udine In memory of my grandpa The Grape Harvest 2014 © 2017, Villa Ottelio, All Rights Reserved, C. FISC. MNIMCD53EE58L483Y. This site use CookiesOkPrivacy policy	cc/2019-30/en_middle_0059.json.gz/line1983
__label__wiki	0.635601	0.635601	Join thousands of travelers and Plan your trip with ease. By clicking you accept Blink terms & condition and privacy policy. Châteaux of the Loire Valley Lake of Como You can search for names, tag like Coliseum or Restaurants Discover Sydney with our free appGET Discover the most instagrammable places of with our free app 🎡 Beautiful sights 🍔 Local Food ✅ Selfie spots Best things to see Australian Cuisine Guide Surf Guide Sydney's Instagrammable Plan your best adventure quick and easy Pick attractions, food & activities Everything in sync with the App Plan with the app Amusement park Sydney, Australia Sydney's most iconic amusement park and tourist destination Luna Park Luna Park Sydney, also known as the Luna Park Precinct, is a heritage-listed former transport interchange and now amusement park located at 1 Olympic Drive, Milsons Point, North Sydney Council. The amusement park is owned by the Luna Park Reserve Trust, an agency of the Government of New South Wales, and was added to the New South Wales State Heritage Register on 5 March 2010.The park was constructed during 1935 approximately 600 metres (2,000 ft) from the northern approaches of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, and ran for seventy-month seasons until 1972, when it was opened year-round. Loading tips Friday: 11:00 AM – 10:00 PM 1 Olympic Dr, Milsons Point NSW 2061, Australia Suggested by	cc/2019-30/en_middle_0059.json.gz/line2007
__label__wiki	0.5297	0.5297	Australia adopts British Standard for cladding fire performance Australia is the most recent country to adopt British Standard BS 8414, in the recently published AS 5113 standard for determining fire performance characteristics and classification of external walls of buildings. The inclusion of the British Standard in AS 5113 adds to the growing international recognition of BS 8414 as a robust means of determining … Continue reading “Australia adopts British Standard for cladding fire performance” Hertfordshire to become the UK’s green technology centre The Green Triangle partnership of leading research, education and local government organisations, BRE, Rothamsted Research, University of Hertfordshire, St Albans City & District Council and Oaklands College today announced ambitious plans for an internationally influential centre of excellence for green technology. ‘Comprising a cluster of environmental research, engineering, education, science and technology businesses, the Green … Continue reading “Hertfordshire to become the UK’s green technology centre” New BRE Trust report shows poor quality homes in England cost the NHS £1.4bn per year, and wider society £18.6bn Research from BRE reveals the £18.6 billion cost of leaving poor quality housing in England unimproved. Although we’ve largely eradicated the diseases associated with the slums of Victorian Britain, there remain a significant number of health and safety hazards in many homes. This is compounded by the fact that the UK has some of the … Continue reading “New BRE Trust report shows poor quality homes in England cost the NHS £1.4bn per year, and wider society £18.6bn” BRE Academy launches new eLearning platform – New digital platform is designed to plug the skills gaps of the global construction community at a key time of challenge and change – BRE’s training and education arm, the BRE Academy, has launched a new eLearning platform (bre.ac) designed to meet the changing needs of the construction operatives, professionals and leaders in the … Continue reading “BRE Academy launches new eLearning platform” BRE introduces new test programme and guidance for low carbon cements BRE is now offering testing services related to new performance standard PAS 8820, which has been developed for manufacturers, specifiers and designers of concrete containing alkali-activated cementitious material (ACCM). Designed to encourage the use of AACMs in the construction industry because of their low carbon and improved fire resistance properties and resistance to chemicals and … Continue reading “BRE introduces new test programme and guidance for low carbon cements” Prater achieves BRE BIM Certification Specialist building envelope contractor Prater, is the latest company to achieve BRE BIM Level 2 business certification just after the Government’s compliance mandate for public sector projects is activated. With a number of landmark private sector projects in its portfolio including the Emirates Stadium and Heathrow T4, Prater is also a significant player in the … Continue reading “Prater achieves BRE BIM Certification” BRE Trust joins the Campaign for Science and Engineering The BRE Trust, the largest independent UK charity focused on research and education in the built environment, has joined the Campaign for Science and Engineering (CaSE). CaSE was created in 1986 with a mission to raise awareness of the cultural and economic importance of scientific and technological education and development in the UK. With over … Continue reading “BRE Trust joins the Campaign for Science and Engineering”	cc/2019-30/en_middle_0059.json.gz/line2017
__label__cc	0.56622	0.43378	Miracle Bar and Sippin' Santa Pop-Up Bars Coming to South Florida Here Are the Greater Fort Lauderdale Month 2019 Participating Restaurants Alert Energy: Caffeinated Gum To Launch in April Laine Doss Laine Doss \| March 12, 2013 \| 1:00pm So you drank too much and stayed out far too late last night and now you have an important presentation scheduled for first thing in the morning. Sucks to be you (although we've been in the same boat far too many times). Panicking, you pop a few aspirin and down an entire pot of coffee. You're feeling better but your breath smells like the bottom of a Nespresso machine that hasn't been cleaned for a year. Frantically spraying your yap with Binaca, you wish that someone would invent a product that could wake you up and make you smell all minty fresh at the same time! Well, gum legend Wrigley has heard your plea. The makers of all-things minty and chewy is launching Alert Energy Caffeine Gum this April. The gum, which has its own website, will come in two flavors -- mint and fruit (we know...we know..we were expecting Arctic morning and orange-you-glad-you're-awake instead of these generic names). piece of sugar-free gum will contain about 40 milligrams of caffeine. That's about the same kick you'll get in a half cup of coffee. The gum will sell for about $2.99 for an eight-piece pack. It's cheaper than Starbucks and sounds like an essential new item to go into our "morning after" kit for that walk-of-shame home. Besides, a latte tucked away in your knapsack is just too messy. Follow @ CleanPlateBPB Laine Doss is the food and spirits editor for Miami New Times, covering the restaurant and bar scene in South Florida. She has been featured on Cooking Channel’s Eat Street and Food Network’s Great Food Truck Race. Doss won an Alternative Weekly award for her feature on what it’s like to wait tables. In a previous life, she appeared off-Broadway and shook many a cocktail as a bartender at venues in South Florida and New York City. When she’s not writing, you can find Doss running some marathon then celebrating at the nearest watering hole. Facebook: Laine Doss Twitter: @lainedoss Delray Beach Will Soon Be Home to a Michelin-Starred Chef and... Elisabetta's Ristorante Will Open at Former 32 East Location... Twisted Roots Kava Brewery Features Kava Cocktails in an... The Ten Best Happy Hours In Fort Lauderdale	cc/2019-30/en_middle_0059.json.gz/line2019
__label__wiki	0.762156	0.762156	Cross-council consensus bids to halt HS2 works until 'notice to proceed' given The Bucks Herald says #EnoughIsEnough Following am impassioned debate at Aylesbury Vale & Chiltern District Council, South Bucks District Council and now Buckingham County Council are now set to follow suit and pass a motion to delay works in the Vale. Councils across Buckinghamshire are piling pressure on the Government to stop all current HS2 preparation work until the detailed design has been properly approved and full cost of the scheme made clear. As part of the collective action, Aylesbury Vale and Chiltern District Councils have already debated and agreed a special motion at their full council meetings last week, calling on the Government to pause all current site work until the 'Notice to Proceed' has been approved. South Bucks District Council has also agreed to write to HS2 to express the same concerns. And tomorrow (April 25), Buckinghamshire County Council will debate the same motion at their full council meeting. As required by the Department of Transport, a Notice to Proceed should not be given until the management capability, affordability of contracts and robustness of the revised business case have all been fully proven and approved. The early HS2 works are already causing devastation across the county from Calvert in the north, through Great Missenden and down into the Colne Valley. There are major utilities works, roadworks, ground investigation, vegetation removal and netting of hedgerows all happening now. This is all in spite of it being widely reported that the official Notice to Proceed for the project has been pushed back towards the end of the year. In a joint statement, Council Leaders said "There was absolutely no justification why the County's residents should suffer significant disruption and long term environmental destruction while things remain so unclear. "They say it's massively disruptive to have HS2 contractors trampling all over the County doing preparatory work without the final scheme details even being known. Some of the current work is also extremely controversial and is creating significant issues locally. "As a result, Councils also want HS2 Ltd to significantly improve the effectiveness of its community engagement with all those impacted by the line. "The Leaders add that if the Crossrail scheme is anything to go by, then it is clear that HS2 is definitely far from on time and on budget. As a result, the councils will be asking for a proper review to be undertaken before any further taxpayer funding is committed." UK toll road fees: 15 major toll roads, bridges and tunnels - and how much each charge to cross AVDC passes 'unanimous' motion to write to government, in a bid to stall HS2 works	cc/2019-30/en_middle_0059.json.gz/line2022
__label__wiki	0.722339	0.722339	Young Dacorum & Tring talent shines through at National Cross Country Championships Jessica Benveniste finished 25th in the Year 7 girls' race Two young stars from Dacorum & Tring’s young Middle Distance squad showed their mettle at the inaugural Primary and Year 7 National Cross Country Championships, held at Belvoir Castle in Leicestershire. Jessica Benveniste, coming off her superb third placed finish at the Hertfordshire Schools County Championships in February, finished 25th in the Year 7 girls’ race, crossing the line second for the Herts team. Her team-mate Thomas Ashton, who had a strong seventh at the Herts Schools event, finished a respectable 53rd in the Year 7 boys’ race – a brave performance after a long bout of flu. The middle distance squad now have their sights on the spring and summer track circuit, and began the season in style, with U20 athlete Rhys Rowlands and U17 runners Joshua van Heiningen and Grace Birdseye all taking the county title in the 1,500m at the Herts Indoor Championships. Rhys topped the table in a time of 4.33.00, while Joshua won his race in a speedy 4.28.00 and Grace took the title in 5.23.00. British Grand Prix to stay in Northamptonshire until at least 2024 as Silverstone agrees deal with F1	cc/2019-30/en_middle_0059.json.gz/line2023
__label__cc	0.714777	0.285223	BullionStar highlights gold charts from gold exchanges, the London Gold Market, Gold ETF's and much more. Gold Market Charts – March 2017 This monthly chart wrap-up from BullionStar profiles a selection of charts from the GOLD CHARTS R US website so as to illustrate notable developments in gold demand, gold supply and physical gold movements across the world’s major gold markets. Charts covered below include Swiss gold trade flows, Russian gold reserve changes, and Chinese gold demand. For BullionStar’s own gold and silver price charts, see BullionStar’s website under the Charts menu, where, for example, currencies, equity market indices and commodities can be charted and measured in terms of gold, silver, and other precious metals. Shanghai Gold Exchange (SGE) – Gold Withdrawals The below chart features monthly physical gold withdrawals from the Shanghai Gold Exchange (SGE). Given that all gold imported into China and most gold mined and recycled in China passes through the vaults of the SGE, the monthly gold withdrawals from the SGE serve as a useful proxy for overall monthly Chinese wholesale gold demand. Note that SGE gold withdrawals most probably do not reflect gold purchases by the People’s Bank of China (PBoC) since the PBoC is not thought to buy any gold at the SGE, preferring instead to purchase gold in international gold market centres such as London. In February 2017, SGE gold withdrawals totalled 179 tonnes, which was slightly lower than the previous month’s total of 184 tonnes. Year-to-date, withdrawals of gold from the Shanghai gold bourse have now reached 363 tonnes, which on an annualised basis would be nearly 2,200 tonnes. This would equate to about 70% of annual global gold mining supply. Shanghai Gold Exchange – Gold Withdrawals (tonnes), 2008 – end February 2017 Russian Gold Reserves Official gold reserves of the Russian Federation as held by the Bank of Russia rose by 9.3 tonnes (300,000 ozs) during February as the Russian central bank continued its gold reserve accumulation strategy into 2017. This follows the Bank of Russia’s purchase of a sizeable 31.1 tonnes (1,000,000 ozs) of gold in January, bringing its year-to-date accumulation to over 40 tonnes, which on an annualized basis equates to 240 tonnes. Because the Bank of Russia buys its gold from Russian commercial banks – which in turn source the gold from Russian gold mines – the central bank has a lot of flexibility in pacing its gold purchases through the calendar year. In 2016, the Bank of Russia did not report any gold purchases for December since it had already reached its full-year target of 200 tonnes by the end of November. It remains to be seen if a similar pattern will play out in 2017. Having bought 200 tonnes in 2016, 208 tonnes in 2015 and 177 tonnes in 2014, the central bank will probably again aim for aggregate additions of at least 200 tonnes during 2017, which would mean another 160 tonnes of gold buying between now and December. According to its official reporting line, the Bank of Russia now holds 1,655 tonnes (53,200,000 ozs) of gold. Russian central bank Gold Reserves, cumulative (tonnes), 2006 – end February 2017 Transparent Gold Holdings – ETFs and Others the US dollar gold price declined during the first half of March, retrenching from the $1260 to the $1200 range. This was followed by a rebound beginning mid-month which saw the US dollar price again trade in the $1260 area. The group of gold-backed ETFs and similar vehicles tracked in the below chart saw near-zero net inflows of physical gold during the first 3 weeks of March. The total combined holdings of these vehicles and products remain near the 2680 tonnes mark and on a monthly view would appear to be flat-lining. Weekly Transparent Gold Holdings, 1 year rolling period to 24 March 2017 However, these net-zero inflows mask a shifting pattern of alternating daily inflows and outflows throughout March, with daily inflows and outflows often in the 5 – 10 tonne range. Weekly Transparent Gold Holdings, 3 months rolling period to 24 March 2017 Swiss Gold Imports and Gold Exports Non-monetary gold imports into Switzerland totalled 139 tonnes in February 2017. This figure was substantially lower than the corresponding gold import flows during each of the prior three months. Swiss non-monetary gold exports were also relatively subdued in February, totalling only 89 tonnes. Interestingly, February was also the quietest month for Swiss gold exports in 2016 when only 91 tonnes were exported out of the country. Given that Swiss gold imports have now exceeded Swiss gold exports for the past 2 months, this implies a year-to-date net build in gold inventories of 127 tonnes to the world’s largest gold refining centre. Swiss Gold Imports / Exports, monthly data, 2 year rolling to February 2017 Switzerland’s gold imports during January predominantly came from 5 import sources, namely the UK (London), Hong Kong, UAE (Dubai), US and Thailand. Each of these sources has been a noted exporter of gold to Switzerland on and off over the last 3-4 months. The presence of Hong Kong, Thailand and the UAE on the list is interesting and shows that global gold supply is dynamic and changeable since these centers would usually be considered export destinations of Swiss gold, not supply sources. Some of the flows from Thailand and UAE may represent processing scrap (e.g. gold jewellery reprocessing). Swiss Gold Imports by top source countries, Month of February 2017 On the export side, India was again the top destination for Swiss non-monetary gold exports in February, which was also the case in January 2017. In February, India took in 37.2 tonnes of gold from Switzerland. In 2nd place was China which absorbed 21.5 tonnes. In a distant third place was Hong Kong which received 7.2 tonnes. Together these 3 destinations represented 75% of Switzerland’s February gold exports (non-monetary gold). Swiss Gold Exports by top destination countries, Month of February 2017 The 30 tonnes of non-monetary gold which the UK (London) sent to Switzerland in February reinforces a trend which began last October when London turned from a net importer of gold from Switzerland into a net-exporter of gold to Switzerland. On an accumulated basis over the last 5 consecutive months, there has been a net movement of 300 tonnes of non-monetary gold out of London and onward to Switzerland, most of which is destined for Switzerland’s gold refineries but perhaps also for Swiss-based gold-backed ETFs and other wealth management holdings. Swiss Gold Imports and Exports with the UK, 5 year rolling period to February 2017 Popular Blog Posts by Gold Market Charts Gold Market Charts – March 2017 Gold Market Charts: November 2018 Gold Market Charts – May 2018 Gold Market Charts – December 2017 Gold Market Charts – November Gold Market Charts – October 2017 Gold Market Charts – September 2017 Gold Market Charts – August 2017 Gold Market Charts – July 2017 Gold Market Charts – June 2017 Gold Market Charts – May 2017 Gold Market Charts – April 2017 Gold Market Charts – February 2017 Gold Market Charts – January 2017 Gold Market Charts – December 2016	cc/2019-30/en_middle_0059.json.gz/line2024
__label__wiki	0.998696	0.998696	Chuka Umunna joins the Lib Dems with more anti-Brexit MPs set to follow Adam Payne Lib Dem MP Chuka Umunna. Chuka Umunna has joined the Liberal Democrats. Umunna, the former Labour Party and Change UK MP, will be unveiled as a Lib Dem MP on Friday. The former minister launched Change UK earlier this year but admitted on Thursday that he was "wrong" to believe that British people wanted a new political party. Former Change UK MPs Heidi Allen and Sarah Wollaston are also close to joining the Lib Dems. LONDON — Chuka Umunna has officially joined the Liberal Democrats having quit the Labour Party to form a new centrist party — The Independent Group/Change UK — earlier this year. Umunna will be unveiled as a Lib Dem Member of Parliament on Friday afternoon after telling The Times newspaper that Sir Vince Cable's resurgent party will spearhead a "new progressive movement in this country." He added that the party was the country's leading anti-Brexit force and "is at the forefront of a renewed, progressive and internationalist movement in British politics that shares my values." Heidi Allen and Sarah Wollaston, who quit the Conservatives in February to join Umunna in The Independent Group/Change UK, are also close to joining the Lib Dems, sources have told Business Insider. The Lib Dems are on a high after gaining over 700 seats at last month's council elections and leapfrogging both the Conservatives and Labour to finish second in the European Parliament elections. Their recent success has been fuelled by the support of Remain voters who are dismayed by the two main parties' commitment to delivering Brexit. Jo Swinson, who is running to replace Cable as Lib Dem leader, welcomed Umunna's arrival, telling Business Insider: "I have worked with Chuka on the People's Vote campaign, and I know the passion, intellect, and energy he will bring to our party, and our campaign to stop Brexit." Her leadership rival, Ed Davey, described Umunna as a "key player in this fight" to stop Brexit and said: "He has shown huge courage, and will make a major contribution to the Liberal Democrats." Layla Moran: The Lib Dems would 'absolutely love' to welcome Change UK defectors It is not yet clear whether Umunna will contest the seat he currently holds, Streatham, at the next general election. Sources familiar with Umunna's thinking said that he was considering fighting to retain his current seat. However, he is also said to be considering replacing Vince Cable as the Lib Dem candidate in Twickenham, or standing in another seat where the Lib Dems could win, like Cheltenham in southwest England. Lib Dem MPs Layla Moran and Chuka Umunna. Matthew Chattle / Barcroft Images / Barcroft Media via Getty Images When Umunna and other MPs quit Labour to launch The Independent Group/Change UK earlier this year, they argued that a new party was necessary as the Lib Dems were in a state of terminal decline. He admitted on Thursday that this theory was wrong, telling The Times he thought that "millions of politically homeless people that wanted a new option on the ballot paper — I was wrong on that." He said: "I also think I vastly underestimated the importance of having an infrastructure and existing relationships with voters, which is a point that Vince had made to me long before I actually left the Labour Party." Umunna has in the past also criticised the Lib Dems for their role in the Coalition government's austerity policies. In 2017, he said the party was "trying to bury their recent past as the enablers of Tory austerity, but working people will not forget or forgive the damage they did in government and what it is still doing to our communities." Umunna was among six MPs who quit Change UK last week after the party fumbled its launch and failed to win a seat at the European Parliament elections. The remaining five MPs have been forced to change the party's name again due to a legal dispute with petition website Change.Org. The party has applied to change its name to The Independent Group for Change. Got a tip? Email this reporter at apayne@businessinsider.com and send him a direct message on Twitter at @adampayne26. Our Brexit Insider Facebook group is the best place for up-to-date news and analysis about Britain's departure from the EU, direct from Business Insider's political reporters. Join here. SEE ALSO: Ed Davey says he would 'totally' welcome former Change UK MPs if he becomes Lib Dems leader DON'T MISS: Jo Swinson: I can be Britain's first Liberal Democrat prime minister More: Brexit Insider Chuka Umunna Liberal Democrats	cc/2019-30/en_middle_0059.json.gz/line2027
__label__wiki	0.938159	0.938159	Wildcat Kills 35-Year-Old Woman At Oregon Sanctuary A wildcat in Tanzania, which was not involved in the attack. PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — Authorities say an employee at an Oregon animal sanctuary has been attacked and killed by a wildcat. Sgt. Robert Wurpes of the Clackamas County Sheriff's office says the attack was reported Saturday night at WildCat Haven in the suburban Portland community of Sherwood. He says the animal was locked in a cage following the attack. Wurpes declined to release any details on the victim, how the attack occurred or the type of wildcat. He says more information will be available Sunday. The Oregonian reports that fire officials identified the victim as a 35-year-old woman. WildCat Haven officials did not immediately respond to a telephone message left early Sunday. Its website describes the facility as a "last hope" for more than 60 wildcats that have been abandoned or abused, including bobcats, cougars, lynx and tigers. The facility is not open to the public, but does provide on-site tours to donors. More: Associated Press	cc/2019-30/en_middle_0059.json.gz/line2028
__label__wiki	0.807253	0.807253	Germanwings Co-Pilot Deliberately Crashed Plane, French Prosecutor Says By Kirsten O'Regan Handout/Getty Images News/Getty Images On Thursday, a French prosecutor announced that a co-pilot of Germanwings flight 4U 9525, which went down Tuesday, appears to have crashed the Germanwings plane deliberately. According to prosecutor Brice Robin, co-pilot Andreas Lubitz pressed a button to order the plane to descend when the main pilot went to the bathroom. Lubitz then refused to open the cockpit door to let the other pilot re-enter; audio revealed that the main pilot had banged on the door and demanded to be let in, Robin said, but Lubitz did not acquiesce. According to the New York Times, the audio recording revealed that in the minutes before the crash, the pilot had left the cockpit and was unable to re-enter. “The guy outside is knocking lightly on the door, and there is no answer,” a senior French military official involved in the investigation told the Times on condition of anonymity. “And then he hits the door stronger, and no answer. There is never an answer.” The comments from the French prosecutor leading the investigation now suggest that this silence was deliberate. Robin said: At this moment, in light of investigation, the interpretation we can give at this time is that the co-pilot through voluntary abstention refused to open the door of the cockpit to the commander, and activated the button that commands the loss of altitude. Robin added that Lubitz had been breathing normally up until the moment of the crash, in spite of the rapid descent of the plane into the French Alps and the banging of the main pilot on the cockpit door, and that he consciously wanted to "destroy the aircraft." It's unclear what Lubitz's motive could have been, but both FAA records and Robin confirm that he had no clear link to terrorism. Images: Getty Images (1)	cc/2019-30/en_middle_0059.json.gz/line2030
__label__wiki	0.799459	0.799459	8Journalism, Communication Today 8Communication Today 3Magazines, Journalism , Communication Today 1Soviet Union, Foreign Affairs & Defense 1Indep. States (Fmr. Sov. Union), Soviet Union , Foreign Affairs & Defense 1Media, Communication Today 1American History TV 1Magazine Article, Journalism , Communication Today 1Book TV 1Foreign Affairs & Defense 8Katrina Vanden Heuvel 2David Halperin 1John McArdle 1Brien Kelley 1Thomas Conway 1Musa Klebnikov 1Larry Siems 1Natalia Estemirova 1Victor S. Navasky 1Eugene "E.J." Joseph Dionne Jr. Journalism Katrina Vanden Heuvel January 25, 2017 Last Aired January 26, 2017 Katrina vanden Heuvel on Progressive Priorities Katrina vanden Heuvel talked about her Nation piece, which outlines progressive priorities for the Republican-controlled government, as well as how journalists should cover the Trump administration. This… July 23, 2015 Last Aired August 24, 2015 History of The Nation To mark the 150th anniversary of The Nation, one of the oldest magazines in America, Timothy Naftali, director of the Tamiment Library at New York University, interviewed former editor… October 3, 2011 Last Aired October 3, 2011 Katrina Vanden Heuvel Remarks on Media Responsibility Katrina Vanden Heuvel talked about the journalistic responsibility of the media, and urged progressives to speak out for fairness and balance in the news media. She also talked about a… May 31, 2007 Last Aired August 27, 2007 Q&A with Katrina Vanden Heuvel Katrina Vanden Heuvel was interviewed about the mission of the liberal magazine The Nation and her philosophy as publisher. Topics included the degeneration of political debate, media… December 6, 2006 Last Aired February 22, 2007 Remembering Anna Politkovskaya A tribute was held for Russian journalist and author Anna Politkovskaya who was murdered on October 7, 2006 in the elevator of her apartment building. A special correspondent for Russia’s Novaya… June 2, 2006 Last Aired July 3, 2006 Becoming a Journalist Moderated by Mr. Dionne, the closing plenary session consisted of panel members discussing the topic, “Why Becoming a Journalist Matters.” Topics included many stories of their experiences,… June 2, 2006 Last Aired June 8, 2006 The Press and Democracy Campus Progress held a national conference for journalism students at the headquarters of Center for American Progress. Topics included future of journalism and opportunities as a… May 21, 2004 Last Aired September 3, 2004 Reflections on Careers in Journalism As part of a joint project between C-SPAN and Time Warner Cable, Ms. Vanden Heuvel talked with students about her career in journalism, her experiences, and her tenure as editor of The…	cc/2019-30/en_middle_0059.json.gz/line2033

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