The Retreat

The Model Confederacy So my local government has done it; they have decided one of the most important periods in American history, one that the Social Justice Warriors lean on as one of the prime motivators and excuses for ever-increasing authoritarianism in the pursuit of justice, never happened. The American Civil War is no more. Never happened. And with it, obviously there must have never been an issue with slavery in the United States – or else we would've fought a war over it. And after that war, there certainly weren't any acts of reconciliation, magnanimous allowances to the defeated in order to allow them some measure of dignity in the course of a return to actual unity. LAWRENCEVILLE, GA — The Gwinnett County Board of Commissioners has approved a resolution to move a controversial Confederate monument into storage while court proceedings revolving around the 28-year-old monument continue. The monument sits on the grounds of Gwinnett County's Historic Cour...

In order to implement a crowd management system which is capable of capping the number of attendees in a given area, provides for security in making sure that the system can't be subverted by a bad actor from outside, and which is fast and easy to train new users on, you can use the commonly available cell phone, a custom web app, and cheaply printed custom tear-off tickets with sequential UPC to build a scalable, robust implementation. Requirements Controlling entry into a public space, a number of things have to be present in order to be possible. Note that this discussion doesn't discuss controlling or tracking exits from an event space. An area with clear bottlenecks, of at most two-person wide entries Staff interested in and empowered to control entry at the bottlenecks A means of controlling and tracking individual entries to the space A cell phone or tablet with camera for each controlling staffer Staff within the space interested in , trained, and empowered to contr...

EXT. THE ORPHIC ORACLE - DAY Everything proceeds in silence. The Oracle is not the largest ship in any fleet. In fact, she's downright tiny compared to the bulk of the refueller that she's nuzzled up against, her sphincters dilated for easy access to her holds. Hydrogen and helium get pumped into bulging tanks above and rear. Men and women, like ants on a watermelon, clamber over her hull checking for micrometeorite damage or worse. The hull has definitely seen worse. The rear is open, pressed against a large umbilicus, sealed tight against vacuum. Inside the translucent extension, shadows shift, casting pantomime shadows against the near wall. INT. ORACLE LOADING BAY - CONTINUOUS Abruptly, it's a hammer of noise as machines clank, motors strain, and people shout across the clamour. HENRI LLOYD stands in a commanding position over the bay on a stack of supply crates, hands on hips, face a mask of conflicting emotions. He wears a bandage on his left sh...

After the storm, the flood. Thankfully for me, this is going to be a very graphics-light post. After the exciting events of the last mission, the failed patrol which ended in a heroic last stand followed by quite a bit of running away, there is some definite bookkeeping that needs to happen. We've lost three out of four crew and the entirety of the Spectacular Craptacular. The one survivor of the crew fled the field. The good tank Chicken Scratch was utterly disabled. Luckily the crew of the Chicken Scratch got away completely unharmed. Don't Drop That Baby engaged the enemy and retreated from the battlefield intact, despite having the least experience of anyone in the group. Two vehicles, most of one crew, and a failed mission. Plus the crew of the Chicken Scratch probably deserves to be statted up. Let's get on that. Replacing Crewmembers Please turn to page 26 in the hymnal. First up, we look to see if people who have bailed out of the disabled vehicle or are Out...