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--Thunder Bolt--

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Posts posted by --Thunder Bolt--

    72 types of potential terrorists. How many are you?

    in General Discussion

    · Edited by Roko's Basilisk

    Just wait 'till we get another Republican President.  Then, suddenly, all of the NSA spying and War On Terra stuff will be wonderful again, and the "Reagan Coalition" will be saying, "If you've got nothing to hide, what are you afraid of?  Support Our Troops!  USA!  USA!"

     

    Edit: Oh, and the liberals will go back to opposing this shit.

     

    "What do you call yourself in a country where the liberals don't liberate, and the conservatives don't conserve?"

     

    --John Michael Greer

    Outcasts of the Everfree Forest

    in Everfree Roleplays

    Sunyatay:

     

    "Starshine!" Sunyatay cried, reaching out for the colt with her telekinesis as he was flung away by Atlas' sudden movement.  With all of her power focused in Starshine, her cape, books, and flower dropped to the ground. Her grip was too weak, and not fast enough.  A dark blur swept into his path, catching him before he crashed into a tree.  The bat-winged creature set him down, then turned slitted emerald eyes on her.

     

    Nightshade:

     

    Nightshade was about to ask the colt if he was alright, when an eerie light caught her attention.  It came from the ghostly form of a unicorn, horn aglow.  Nightshade blinked in astonishment.  Nightshade had been taught spells for warding against, and pacification of, troubled ancestral spirits as part of her Apprenticeship, but never had she encountered such an intense, visible manifestation.  Fluttering in front of Starshine, she slashed her front hooves in the air.  As if striking sparks from flint, her hooves traced the lines of a glyph that briefly glowed with magical fire.

     

    "Mert khesefet nesheniu nehemet uai eni aau," she intoned solemnly in the ancient sacred tongue of bat pony sorcery and ritual.

    Should the first space-travel ship(futuristic) be named the USS Enterprise?

    in General Discussion

    I'd be cool with the first warp-capable starship (assuming such a thing is possible) being called the Enterprise.  I don't think it's very likely though.  Assuming continued technological progress and human expansion into the Solar System, it will be a long time, probably a century or more, before we have the physics and engineering--not to mention the available super-high-density energy sources--required to power an Alcubierre drive, create a wormhole, or whatever it would take to make a faster-than-light starship possible.  In that intervening time, it's possible, even likely, that Star Trek could become as obscure as a popular ballad from the Renaissance is now.  Non-Western cultures could well come to the fore between now and then, so that the first FTL starship could be named after something or someone important in their culture.  The Zheng He, after a Chinese admiral who led a fleet of ships on a mission of exploration in the early 1400's, the Vimana, after the flying palaces of the gods described in the Mahabharata, perhaps a god, hero, or adventurer from African history. 

     

    I think it would be cool if it was the Stanislav Petrov, named for the man who saved the world.  Saved.  The.  World.

     

    As for the Millennium Falcon, I wouldn't be too surprised if that's a popular name for asteroid miners, freighters, and courier ships at an earlier point in space-travel history.  It might happen even sooner, if one of the present-day space tourism pioneers decides to name one of their ships in honor of the Falcon. 

     

     

    When there's an abundance of something to go around (i.e, rich kids having money), they will not be very impressed by it. They will perceive it as normal, the same goes for our descendants born into a space-travelling lifestyle. Even if we were name the first ship the "Enterprise", it would hold very little value. So we built a ship that travel great distances... so what? Don't you think that it was only a matter of time before this had happened anyway?

     

    As I said, there's nothing groundbreaking about it if it's so predictable.

     

    I disagree.  A future spacefaring society would only go to the significant expense and trouble of building a starship if they considered the enterprise *ba-dum-tish* worthwhile.  For example, if we discovered a life-bearing planet relatively nearby.  We could do this using "wide baseline array" space-based telescopes capable of detecting and analyzing the spectral characteristics of exoplanet atmospheres.  If we find one that has a significant amount of oxygen (like Earth), we could be pretty sure it is life-bearing, because oxygen is highly reactive, and would only persist in an atmosphere if there's something continually producing more of it, like photosynthesis.

     

    Another possible way that our descendants might eventually spread to other solar systems, if FTL drives turn out to be impossible, would be a kind of gradual expansion with slower-than-light ships.  Once the inner and outer Solar System are fairly densely colonized, people (or sapient machines or some hybrid of the two) could start spreading to Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud objects, and from there to brown dwarfs or other bodies that might exist between solar systems, until they reach Oort Clouds around other stars.  These people might be more like space gypsies or high-tech "hunter-gatherer" tribes than the Federation Starfleet, as they'd be setting out for open spaces far from the rest of human-cybernetic civilization, too far away for normal trade and communication to be very practical. 

    An earth pony villain

    in MLP:FiM Canon Discussion

    My headcanon is that unicorn magic is only the most obvious type, and that there is a subtler type of magic that everypony can access.  For now I call it "implicate" magic, to use David Bohm's terminology.  Most if not all species in Equestria use implicate magic in one way or another; parasprites for reproduction, dragons for fire-breathing, phoenixes for resurrection, pegasi for flight that would be otherwise physically impossible given the size of their wings, etc..  Earth ponies can use implicate magic.  For example, Applejack uses it when she bucks apples.  Apples wouldn't naturally just fall out of a shaken tree and land neatly into buckets placed under it.  Pinkie Pie is a master, as is Discord.  Notice that he doesn't wield magic through his horns unicorn style.  Most ponies don't know implicate magic exists because it's like water to fish. 

     

    Unicorn magic appears to be a lot like the magic of the Hermetic tradition; there are grimoires and mathematical-geometrical symbolism, specific "spells" that must be consciously understood and properly performed.  It is very abstract and cerebral.  Implicate magic works more like qi in the Asian martial arts, or animist shamanism, or "the Force" in Star Wars.  It works more through the emotions and the subconscious than through the intellect.  Most ponies and creatures use it unconsciously.  Rainbow Dash uses it to perform sonic rainbooms; she thinks she's just being really athletic with her wings.  Fluttershy wields it to produce The Stare.  Zecora uses it with rituals and natural elements to create her potions.  In Magic Duel we also see that she knows enough to become a Yoda figure for Twilight.

     

    An earth pony who was a natural talent like Pinkie Pie or Zecora, noticed that s/he had unusual abilities, and began a regimen of study and practice could well become very powerful, in my opinion.  Just imagine an anti-Pinkie Pie, with physics-breaking powers and the ability to spontaneously conjure a Despair Cannon (or Mind-Control Cannon, whatever) instead of a Party Cannon.  Emerging from potted plants at will, able to stalk like nobody's business (even Rainbow Dash couldn't outrun Pinkie), able to conjure illusions like Zecora (Luna Eclipsed, IIRC)...  Throw in a new ability or two for spice, like an Earthbending power (for those who haven't seen Avatar: The Last Airbender, the ability to manipulate earth and rock at will), and some cunning in its use, and you have a villain at least as formidable as NMM or Sombra.

     

    Even a fairly modest amount of power in implicate magic could go a long way for an earth pony villain, because they would have the element of surprise.  Nopony expects a "mere" earth pony to be a threat...which could be a pretty good motive.  Say, they can create a mind-control potion, or they can shape-shift (as two of the Pinkie clones do in Too Many Pinkie Pies).  That, plus some high-octane intellect, maybe some minions and Steampunk mechanical contraptions, like massive armored robo-pony vehicles (call them Trojan Horses ;) ), and you're good to go.

    • Brohoof 2

    You get pony ears.

    in Sugarcube Corner

    Ears:

     

    Phase 1: 'AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA......!"

     

    Phase 2: *learns to rotate them like a cat or a horse, notes the interesting effects of being able to selectively aim hearing*  "Huh...okaaayyyy...."

     

    Phase 3:  "AY!  WHY COULDN'T THIS HAVE HAPPENED IN TIME FOR ME TO GO TO BRONYCON?!"

     

    Phase 4: "Whelp, good thing I have a top hat.  My employer is just going to have to accept the fact of me going full-on Steampunk henceforth."

     

     

    Horn:

     

    Phase 1: 'AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA......!"

     

    Phase 2: *learns that I can't do magic with it, yet*  "Huh...okaaayyyy...."

     

    Phase 3:  "AY!  WHY COULDN'T THIS HAVE HAPPENED IN TIME FOR ME TO GO TO BRONYCON?!"

     

    Phase 4: Depends on its initial size and orientation.  If I could hide it for awhile under my top hat or a beret, I would probably do that so I could buy time.  I would start putting in the time to practice magick instead of just having books about it. ;)  I'd start studying NLP, hypnosis, qigong, and practicing public speaking.

     

    Phase 5: Write a book and become a rock star of the New Age lecture circuit.  Could Deepak Chopra compete with a real, honest-to-goodness unicorn horn?  I don't think so. *mischievous grin*

     

    Phase 5 (alternate): Learn stage magic and become Human!Genderflip!Trixie. :D

     

    Either way, the sudden appearance of new bodily features would be proof that magical metamorphosis is possible and apparently under way.  I would avoid interfering (attempting to surgically remove the ears or horn) because, who knows what the effects would be?  In terms of Genre Savvy, I don't recall ever reading or seeing a story where someone starts turning into a superhero or magical being, tries to stop the transformation and continue their previous mundane life, and had that work out for them.  Imagine the disappointment if, say, you cut off your uni-horn only to find out six months later that it could have worked magic if you'd just let it grow a little longer, or that you complete your pony transformation and get brought to Equestria, only now your unicorn powers don't work.

    • Brohoof 1

    An earth pony villain

    in MLP:FiM Canon Discussion

    I think  an earth pony could be a convincing if she or he has magic like Pinkie Pie or Zecora, only more powerful and applied to evil purposes.  Or they could have superequine strength and/or speed, perhaps attacking with a horde of warriors.  Like the Mongols, but without the riders. ;)  Or be a pony Batman/Lex Luthor, with lots of gadgets.  Xanatos-level evil genius wouldn't hurt either, though that might be a bit hard to pull off in a show for young children.  I think a "Nightmare Pinkamena" (Pinkie Pie turned to evil somehow) could be a genuine menace.  Or a Pinkie clone that somehow managed to avoid being rounded up with the rest of them.

    Ponies always right hypocrisy?

    in Sugarcube Corner

    There was an infamous quote from a fan fiction writer in our fandom with many of the stories involving around the theme. That went something along these line likes below.

     

    "The Ponies as a truly superior species can do whatever it wants to a lesser species like Humans, and if said lesser species did the same thing did back to them, then they would be evil."

     

    Meaning a superior species can enslave or commit genocide on your species and maintain the moral high ground no matter what, and if said species resists, then they are evil.

     

    What? So Humanity is evil for not wanting to be enslaved or destroyed? Like what if another all powerful species used this same stupid logic to the Ponies? But if the Ponies fight back, then they are evil for resisting them?

     

    It's just hypocrisy in my opinion. 

     

    It isn't just Nazi "logic."  It's the "logic" behind pretty much every atrocity committed by the human species.  And the core premise in this case, that the ponies are inherently superior to us?  I'm not buying it.  David Brin offers an excellent rebuttal to this sort of thinking in the latest post on his blog:

     

    Here I'd like to challenge readers to try a little experiment, one that is sure to chip at the stylish cynicism we absorb from both media and our own sanctimonious egotism.  Are you honest and willing to reconsider?  Most people who do as I recommend (below) come away at least a bit inspired, less sure that their fellow citizens are complete sheep, and possibly stoked with just a little more confidence that we can do it - cross the next 50 years of minefields and quicksand pits, so that our children will get to something better. 
     
    For starters, have you heard one of the oldest arguments for cynicism? Some variant on:
     
    “A cynic is an optimist who has snapped out of it and realized how awful people are.”
     
    Yep, it's one of the great smug-cliches of all time. And I can only respond with --
     
    ”What is a cynic who snaps out of it even FARTHER? Enough to realize that, despite the gruesomely stupid, self-delusional and abysmally corrupt aspects of human nature... things are getting phenomenally better? And have been for quite some time?
     
    I mean, which is more amazing? That the Enlightenment is under threat from a collusive cabal of conniving aristocrats, imperialists and extremist nutjobs? Or the fact that this routine and utterly predictable alliance, which ruled every other urban culture for 4,000 years has been staved off repeatedly, till now, by a republic -- and a macro-civilization -- that has kept combining redesign and renewal and revolution with an almost infinite capacity for resilience in the face of repetitious human nature?
     
    156209451.jpg?w=500So here is Brin’s Exercise... I command you to go forth and do this!
     
    Go to a street corner, preferably one with a very busy four-way -- or eight or twelve (via multiple lanes) -- traffic not controlled by electronic lights, but simple stop-signs -- where people and cars and bicycles must balance traffic rules every second, negotiating  right-of-way and movement with quick eye contact, lazy little hand-flicks and brief nods. Watch for a while until it all sinks in. Allow yourself to be amazed at how easy it seems. How relaxed and bored everyone is, with this libertarian miracle of self-regulation.

     

    Yes, if you stand there long enough, you'll spot someone doing something stupid or rude. Fine. Tally it up. Get a ratio.

     
    Then do a slow 360. Notice all the other things that are working! The quiet and efficient courtesies, the technologies, the tiny acts of honesty and cooperation. That person over there could have stolen from that shop, but didn't. Those telephone lines and power cables have been working, nonstop, for at least a decade... and so on. Parse it smaller and smaller.
     
    Notice all the hidden competence of a myriad professionals that make all the switches turn on time and fill the restaurants with food. Do not let a patch of one square degree pass your view without comment, or noticing something that you took for granted! If you finish the turn having counted less than a hundred bona fide miracles, start over!  Better yet, ponder what any of your ancestors would have seen, doing a similar slow turn, at any point across the last 6000 years.
     
    People accuse me of being a flaming optimist, because I have a naively positive view of human nature.  How absurd! No, friend. I am a flaming optimist because I understand just how wretched human nature is! I am uniquely qualified, as a student of all sciences, of history... and a licensed professional alternate world builder in the mighty genre of Speculative History (also clled science fiction)... and a person whose third and fourth cousins were all murdered by unprecedented rationalization and unspeakable human savagery...
     
    ... as one who awakens every morning surprised that Cossacks have not yet burned my home, taken my wife and kids, burnt me at a stake and ruined my proud civilization.
     
    Not yet.
     
    Hence the ferocity of my optimism, oh my friends and co-rebels against any chance that the bad old days might return. (A possibility that I portrayed in The Postman.) Hence my deep and abiding disdain for cynicism. Because it isn’t helpful. And if it isn’t helpful in this fight, I have no time for it.
     
    We have one hope. The Modernist Agenda -- combined with a little faith. It’s a program that’s worked so far. Indeed, we cannot properly fight for it without conceding -- indeed, AVOWING! -- that it has worked. Fantastically. Epochally. Better than any other program for living and working together ever devised.  Because no other system even tried to eliminate racism, sexism, feudalism and every other noxious ism that limited human potential.
     
    == Must I also like... my neighbors? ==
     
    Like everyone else, I am drawn to cynical contempt-for-the-masses around me. Masses who seem so dimwitted... who support imbecile politicians... who don’t know where Rwanda is or what happened there... who actually think we are at “war”... who raise such dopey, X-Box-addicted brats...
     
    ritualstreetcorner.jpg?w=248...only then I do the exercise. I go to that street corner and start turning. And every time I finish one of those 360 degree rotations, noticing the myriad marvels all around me, the incredible courtesy and skill and competence that it takes to (ironically) make a civilization that is proof against the individual incompetence of countless fools...
     
    ... I find myself forced to make a concession. To grasp that (as the best scientists say)... I might be wrong.
     
    And that is when I mutter, grudgingly --
     
    ”My neighbors simply... cannot be as stupid as they look.”
     
    Yes, they look stupid. I am sure yours do, too. Perhaps, as individuals, they are. But when they are taken together, combined, made free to interact under rules that encourage decent cooperation and competition, something happens. Together, we get smarter than we ever deserved to be.
     
    It is called an Emergent Property. And, friends, you live in comfort and wallow in information and freedom because of it. Moreover, the shortsighted dogmatists who hate complexity have no idea what it is that they are prescribing, when they offer their simplifying nostrums:
     
    "All government is vile, all the time," or -
     
    "All competitive capitalism is vile, all the time," or -
     
    "Anything western or american is automatically better," 

     

    ...or the recently more pervasive poison see in nearly all Hollywood films:

     
    "Anything western or american is automatically evil and disgusting, without any redeeming properties!"
     
    Pay no attention to the simplistic prescribers of right or left.  What they are offering is to take it away -- all the marvelous complexity -- and replace this marvel with rule by philosopher kings. By platonist prescribers of left, right, libertarian or religious or weird. Dig deep and it's all the same thing. Dolts and ingrates who despise while wallowing in the fruits of the very civilization they hate. Who would end the complexity in favor of a theory. Who would kill the goose that gives a flood of golden eggs.
     
    Oh, yes, some of our neighbors are fools, after all.

     

     

    • Brohoof 3

    Challenge

    in Original Character Help

    · Edited by Roko's Basilisk

    @@dashian500,

     

    OK, finally, here's my entry.  I ended up making two versions, a kinda "luckless, Derpy-ish" version and a "20% Cooler" version.  Each one's cutie mark is beside him.  While I was doing this though, I started having ideas for character background, so I reserve the right to use these images for OC's of my own. ;)

     

    ThunderTwinscopy_zpsedd0d4b5.png

     

    In the event that it isn't clear from the illustration, the second version "rides lightning" by jumping on a cloud to ignite a lightning bolt, then jumps onto the bolt and rides it (and does tricks) surfer/snowboarder style.

    Caption the avatar above you.

    in Forum Games

    · Edited by Roko's Basilisk

    "That pink girl said weird things happen when her hair twitches...then I get tackle-hugged by a cowgirl in a denim miniskirt.  Coincidence?"

     

    Bonus Caption (sig): This is why DHL's package delivery is so fast.  Don't ask me how they can fit it in there though...

    • Brohoof 3
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