#packetdancer

[star-across-the-universe]

My good friend Packetdancer used Midjourney to made me this wonderful set of portraits of my OC Lowan Pipeleaf and the expressions are so good ;D

Please look at my dumbass son and view his impish smiles

Lowan is an incorrigible artist/dockworker turned dinosaur-wrangling adventurer and is sometimes a hobbit (and occasionally an alien octopus). 

[lhs3020b]

packetdancer said:  Sympathies. I’m sitting over here in the US, watching the Brexit news, and still trying to figure out whether your country or mine is more dysfunctional right now. I actually think yours might be winning at the moment; I’m used to seeing our government unable to move forward on things, but even by those standards the Brexit situation is just downright bananapants crazy.

The sense I have is that the US might be just beginning to get past its mess, actually. The Muller-bomb - clearly planned as an October surprise if there ever was one - popped in March instead, and over a year early. Meanwhile the mid-term elections didn’t exactly help Team Tr*mp (to put it mildly) and the dead-end centrists no longer have complete control over the Democratic Party, so the possibility does exist for some actual creative policy-thinking in 2020. Meanwhile the 2010 gerrymander’s running out of steam now, and it’s not clear that the Repubs have gained any converts anywhere, so it’s hard to see how they could manufacture themselves another landslide - at least, not without fraud so overt and unsubtle that they probably would get caught.

So for the US at least, I’m slightly optimistic. Here? Naaaaah. 

[pagerunner-j]

packetdancer replied to your post: Bringing this around again since a certain...

Alas, we are already PoGo friends, so I cannot help you with this quest.

O woe.

(The one that kills me is “Evolve a Magikarp.” I ALREADY DID THAT ONCE and now I have to do it again oh god so much candy so much... ;)

[lhs3020b]

musanocturnis said: I want to not care anymore. To just never mind reading news obsessively every day. Tell the people who told me to be smart and aware to just go fuck themselves.

I'm in "hiding from the news" mode as of the last 24 hours.

(To add a touch of "warped farce" to all this, the BBC's lunch time news just treated us to a glowing editorial about how wonderful Boris Johnson was, because he turned up to work! on a Saturday! and at 8 AM too! Oh, swoon, and never mind the fact the Foreign Secretary is paid a five-figure salary partly on the grounds that it's a 24-7 role. Gah, gah, gah!)

((Any bad situation can be made worse by BoJo - thank heavens at least the worsening is just dumb buffoonery rather than anything more consequential this time.))

packetdancer said: I was just thinking this. Still, the Turkish situation has been brewing since well before I was there in 2014, so I’m not too surprised.

Yeah, Turkey has been quietly getting worse for a few years now. And Erdogan seems to be going off the rails, which is not a good development. But this won't make anything any better.

From what I'm hearing, it sounds like the coup plotters moved before they were ready, and they seem to have picked some odd targets to lock down. (Surely bagging the waterworks and the power stations would be more useful, strategically, than one road bridge? And apparently they didn't think to lock down the Air Force's airstrips, either.) It does look a bit like this was some sort of hasty panic reaction or something, but it's not clear what they were panicking about.

[lhs3020b]

packetdancer said: It’s an excellent series, and—having read it through to the end—you aren’t wrong that some of the choices made here will have consequences down the road. 

There was a distinct sense that “mistakes were being made” in places. I hope I’ll be able to find out how all this progresses.

[lhs3020b]

packetdancer said: When you’ve decided a work environment is toxic and gotten the guts together to resign, having them try to cling to you or talk you out of it just feels like salt in a wound.  I’m so sorry you’re going through this.  :(

Thanks. It's also weird given all the effort that they've exerted to push me out.I've been staring at this email all day, and I'm genuinely at a loss for what to say in reply.

[lhs3020b]

packetdancer said: Ironically, as part of the whole merger my company just did, I was seriously considering trying to transfer to the British parent corporation for a while, just to try living overseas longer-term.  Now?  Maaaaybe not so much. 

Yeah, that’s probably wise. My reading of the situation here is that it’s going to get a lot worse before it gets any better. And things here already were pretty bad to start with.

[lhs3020b]

sinvraal said: It sounds like the whole lot of them should be put on a barge and let out to sea, and a whole new crop of politicians brought in. 

Right now, if I could have Nicola Sturgeon as Prime Minister, I would be delighted.

And yes, the ‘Put Them In A Box And Float Them Out To Sea’ Party would definitely get my vote.

packetdancer said: I feel like the Malcolm Tucker term “fucking omnishambles” describes things well. :/ 

Yeah, we still seem to be stuck in a sequence of never-ending omnishambles, each one worse than the last. And because of the Labour Party’s implosion, it looks like the Tories might just get away with it. :(

sinvraal said: One day I’ll have a rules compliant painted army… I love fun basing, though. It really finishes a figure. 

It’s a good way to add character, and it’s also handy for using up any remaining greenstuff. I just wish my photography was better, so I could actually get better shots of the modded bases.