Maelstrom

Oh yeah, that IS the asshole Godot loves to play and whose combos piss me the hell off.

TIL that the Muppet Christmas Carol was dedicated to Jim Henson and fellow puppeteer Richard Hunt. Henson died 2 years before the movie came out, and Hunt died earlier the same year of the release. And that the song I didn't like at the time "When Love is Gone" was actually not part of the original release. I watched the uncut vhs version as a kid, apparently.

... you found my avatar. Brava.

Your friend has quite the Jon Snow cosplay going for him though. =P

Crop faster, Rin.

You will fear the whale and the beetle. You are forewarned.

Back when I was young, I used to go outside and hit things (grass and plants, like Link) with the wooden sword I got at the renaissance fair.

129 deaths, over 350 wounded. =[

Edit: I stole this from Ame's tumblr

Happy Birthday Ika, you survived another year.

I really can't agree with your assessment of France's border policies. Out of the thousands of people allowed across the the border, a handful of people really aren't reason enough to declare that none should ever cross the border, ever. France has ever been a bastion of rights for the people. Which makes it all the more interesting to see how French policy changes in the next few days. The fact that France waited for that draw of blood first is telling.

You see a shooting star! What do you wish for? - [11/13/2015] The girl of my dreams of course. No shooting star has granted that yet.

I was actually wondering if you were gonna pull up the 'turn the other cheek' stance At this point, I don't know if outreach would help or just encourage them to believe they could pull off another one like this. They are notoriously bad at dialogue and have their own holy mission that has little room for compromise. Anyways, as far as this goes, this doesn't seem all that organized if it's just confined to Paris (and in such a short distance from each other). They probably had outside support as far as bomb-making expertise goes, but as far as further organization? I doubt it or other things would have happened in other cities at around the same time. Seriously, they don't even have to coordinate further than "we're doing something on such and such date, you should plan something for then too" and it would seem far wider scale than it actually is with no more than the one sentence as planned collaboration. It takes very little organization for someone to say 'let's get together at this place at this time, then start shooting.' If you haven't noticed from the news, domestic terrorist attacks are far more often done by small cells or attempted by local radicals inspired by ISIS, and not always actually sanctioned, supplied, nor organized by that group. It's part of their own propaganda that they try to get people previously unconnected with them to rise up and do things on their own, and then claim responsibility for whatever the independent group managed to do, despite having nothing more to do with it than being inspirational. It's part of their thing to try to seem to be a part of sort of grass-roots movement. A bunch of the people who turn have been caught trying to go overseas and join ISIS itself as a result.

Hell to pay... The government won't let themselves appear to sit idly after all this. I hope they don't pass any drastic resolution... at the same time, the people are going to want something... big. "Hold on to your butts."

Let me be the first veteran member to welcome you. And nice garde art, btw.

I said I wasn't gonna suggest anything for a while but I suppose I can let you have one of the cooler ones I was saving for myself for another day.

That's easy enough to say for someone who probably hasn't done security before, nor worked in the intelligence field. And working with the benefit of hindsight to boot. Shit gets routine really fast, and that stuff has never happened in those places before, ever. Where's the precedent for the kind of security required to spot car bombs and suppress automatic gun fire in that area? The vast majority of the security screening they're relying on is at the borders, I'm pretty sure. If you walked into any mall or walmart or marketplace or whathave you wherever you live, do you see anybody there prepared to face all that? When you realize that any place where lots of people gather is a potential target, you also realize that there's no way to be able cover all of that with what few people there are proportionally in police and security services. There's an phrase that they liked to toss around when I was deployed. "Everyone is a sensor." Everybody on patrol hears and sees different things. So it is imperative to ask everyone what they saw and what happened, afterwards. It is equally imperative that everyone talks about something that seems weird or off to them, no matter how small it seems. And really, what needs to happen now is an awareness in everyone, especially civilians who probably never thought about it before, to be aware of what goes on around them. Things that might have been small and inconsequential before clearly have gained much more potential significance now. Depending on how well planned these attacks are, there could be more in the near future. More likely though, there won't be because now everyone will be on their guard and too much activity will draw more suspicion than they will want. Didn't they say that officials know who the culprits are? Chances are they were being watched, but as always, suspicion isn't proof and fewer things can be done pre-emptively and legally as a result. Which ends up leading to the whole ethical debates in the US about spying on people in search of terrorists in ways that weren't legal before. That's a messy subject that I won't touch on but you can start to see some of the logic and concerns that lead up to it.