Musk is trying to check all the boxes:

• Iteration X: Tesla, Solar City, Boring Co.
• New World Order: xAI, OpenAI, Zip2
• Progenitors: Neuralink
• Syndicate: PayPal, X (Twitter)
• Void Engineers: Space X

It’s like a Syndicate stooge staged a hostile take of the other conventions of the Technocratic Union, and it’s going about as well as expected. Cybernetics is a bit of a cheat as it’s in the overlap between Progenitors and Iteration X. If anything he’s trying to sideline Progenitors out as he boosts anti-vax statements.

Yeah, just like he “…needs just a little more time to process his loss,” in 2020.

They have no more fig leaves left to cover their shame.

I’ve been working my way through NADDPOD, and there was a great session where

It was such a great session. It really emblemizes how I try to approach being a GM. Have a prepared roadmap, but have space around the road for the characters to take a roadrally off-road.

If she’s anything like Phyllis Schlafly, why yes, the moment her husband tells her to get back in the kitchen she absolutely will! Right away! She’ll drop everything, her privilege, her power, her perks. Her entire staff will be S.O.L. after just a word from her husband. If he just says the word, why, she wouldn’t utter a word of protest. Honest!

I’m often reminded that while Jesus counselled his followers to turn the other cheek, he reviled the hypocrites.

Have you seen Dmge ? It’s web based, but it has fog of war and a few other nice tricks, if you’ve got the maps.

Just a few weeks ago there were left voices mad that the party wasn’t preventing Andrew Cuomo’s campaign to be mayor of NYC. I didn’t see any one on the left crying foul over suggesting the party shouldn’t play fair.

A lot of the usual suspects, but when my group of grognards plays we reach back a bit. Tomorrow we’re playing Traveler. Last few times we played it was Champions.

I’d like to run an OpenD6 game of I can pull a group together. The last few times I ran it was D6 Star Wars, but I like the system for other genres as well.

Let’s not forget the endless conversations about which park is Werewolf territory and which is Gangrel Vampire territory. Then the slow realization that you don’t live in a place cool enough to attract any supernatural presence.

We’ve literally been told money is speech, but just as soon as people start organizing to vote with our dollar, we’re sabotaging everything.

Ok, so sure, a reasonably large chunk of all states education budget is going away, but for the states that do well, the hole will both be a smaller portion of the overall budget, and easier to make up.

No child left behind testing goes away, so the testing and standards all go away. You can bet the bottom 25 states in education ranking will quietly stop testing and claim they’re doing just great!

It’s the special Ed programs that are really going to catch hell. No dept. of Ed. no enforcement of standards. It will be the easiest portion to cut to save money, and the families left in the lurch will get nothing but thoughts and prayers to fill the gap.

Don’t believe Trump lives in a world where “truth” and “lie” has no meaning. He doesn’t lie to deceive. If that was his goal his lies would be more carefully crafted. He lies as a demonstration of power and test of obedience. He is absolutely saying things that no one believes are true, just to make his toadies nod along, just to ensure no one yet feels brave enough to question his pronouncements.

If none are willing to contradict his statements, none will hesitate to carry out his orders.

This is the sort of thing that makes me feel more sympathy for the Democratic party. The party simply can’t win with the left.

The party leadership worked against Sanders candidacy because they are convinced a liberal can’t win in America. I don’t agree, but recognize with Nixon and Reagan dominating over leftist candidates, Carter ekeing out a win as a centrist, Clinton winning convincingly as a centrist, and Obama winning as a rather vague candidate, recent history has given limited reason think a leftist national candidate is a safe bet.

But if voters are supporting Cuomo and the party doesn’t intervene the party is the wrong for not ignoring the will of the voters and tanking his candidacy.

I mean I get it. The left wants their candidates to win, but the lack of consistency is grating. It makes the centrist seem more sensible.

The reason is apparent in history. Party leadership lived through Nixon and Reagan’s punishing wins over a liberal leaning Democratic party. Labor support went lukewarm, and their funding stream dwindled. The left absolutely utterly to fill the gap. Clinton ran and won as a centrist, and just as important his cohort had a plan to fund the party. The ranks of party leadership were filled with this cohort, and the left hasn’t done the work to take back party control.

I quite like Sanders, but his vision of a groundswell of public support fails to account for the importance of campaign spending in election outcomes. It’s not enough for a few charismatic candidates to win, a party needs to win to effect change, particularly in a federal system. That reality, in my opinion, is why the left is still shut out of party control.

All this too say, the party should stand as an anti-oligarchy party, but the party needs a cohesive vision of what what that means.

I’m reminded of the story of Garg and Moonslicer, and I wish more publishers would lean in to this approach to good and evil. A purely lore approach would be enough to frame the conflict around, some races are naturally social creatures, and some races are naturally antisocial. Both have hierarches, but not all races have the same natural concepts of fairness and justice. Any individual can embrace either world view or a mix, but one comes more naturally to each race. Even if humanity is naturally a good race (debatable, but whatever), members can obviously deviate significantly.

Ultimately it doesn’t mater what race the slavers are, I’m not going to worry about the ethics of self-defensing a party of slavers to death as PC or GM.

Gilbert himself didn’t seem sure he had a complete definition, just a critical piece of it. As a psychologist he would have understood sociopathy well, among other psychological maladies. He seems to be making a distinction here, but that is my reading of him. If he could have provided a diagnosis that underpinned becoming a Nazi it would have been a bombshell, but they all seemed rather normal under a battery of tests. Instead of a specific diagnosis, the Banality of Evil became the commonly cited mechanism behind the Nazi’s abhorrent acts. Weak men following vile leaders.

After thinking about Gilbert’s quote I have come to conclude a lack of empathy is a necessary, if not sufficient condition for evil. There may be more to it, but this piece is already enough to oppose evil, and challenging on its own.

I told you once that I was searching for the nature of evil. I think I’ve come close to defining it: a lack of empathy. It’s the one characteristic that connects all the defendants. A genuine incapacity to feel with their fellow man. Evil, I think, is the absence of empathy.

Captain G.M. Gilbert

The army psychologist assigned to interview the Nazis at the Nuremberg trials.

A list of options has been previously catalogued.

I’ll grant you it’s easier to daydream about violence.

The word exceptional didn’t always mean better. It used to just mean different, as in an exception to the rule.

Elon: Roll the dice to see if I’m getting drunk!

For ages I’ve wanted to run a Friar Tuck themed drunken master style of Monk. In the right group and setting it could be loads of fun.