The Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)

One Piece Live Action: As Close to Perfect As It Gets

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 15:07:54 GMT

I have of course been a fan of the anime "One Piece" for a long time, following the often bonkers adventures of Monkey D. Luffy, the boy with rubber stretching powers who wants to be the Pirate King, and his crew of other oddballs: Roronoa Zoro, inventor of the Santoryu (three-sword-style) fighting technique, in which he uses one sword in each hand and one in his mouth, who wants to become the world's greatest swordsman; Nami, navigator and sometime thief whose ambition is to map the entire world; Usopp, tinkerer and absolutely inhumanly good sniper who wants to overcome his inherent cowardice and braggadocio to become a true warrior of the sea; Brook, a literally living skeleton who loves music as much as the sea, and has to complete a journey to reunite with an old, old friend; Sanji, fabulous cook with equally fabulous combat footwork and the goal of reaching the legendary "All-Blue", a sea where every type of creature found in any of the multiple seas can be found; Robin, archaeologist and fugitive from the World Government for her forbidden knowledge, seeking the answer to what happened during the missing "Void Century"; Chopper, a reindeer who ate the "Human-Human" fruit that made him a freak in both human and reindeer worlds, who wants nothing more than to be a doctor who can cure any illness; and Franky, engineer and shipwright who follows in the footsteps of his mentor and wants the new Pirate King to be sailing a ship made by his hands. (more recently they added Jimbei, a former Warlord of the Sea who believes Luffy has the potential to change the world)

One Piece has been running pretty much continuously since 1999 (the manga started in 1997), having taken its first real break of several months just this year -- leading to the joke that now One Piece will have a second season, the first season having spanned 26 years and well over a thousand episodes (and additional movies and specials).

Given all that, when I heard that Netflix was going to attempt a One Piece live action adaptation I was, well, *dubious* would be an understatement. As a general rule, live action adaptations of anime have ranged from okay (some of the Japanese live action adaptations of their own work) to abysmal (Dragonball Evolution, for instance), but Netflix? An adaptation of something so quirky and bizarre as One Piece? Something so HUGE as One Piece? If they were going to cover even a small FRACTION of the anime they'd have to compress the events and action. They'd need to find a way to make all the ridiculous elements of the show WORK on a live action stage. It would be insanely expensive to do right, and I was pretty sure it would suffer the same fate as Dragonball Evolution: the producers would shy away from the truly bonkers elements of the One Piece world and try to make it more "normal", and kill it.

And if they DID somehow pull off a miracle, they'd never be able to MAINTAIN it.

I was, fortunately, dead wrong.

One Piece Live Action is 99.99% perfect. The casting is fabulous, the acting excellent, and most importantly the world of One Piece is being brought to life in absolutely insanely loving detail, right down to the communications through "DenDen Mushi" snails -- snails that somehow are usable as radio-telephones in an otherwise mostly 1700s-1800s world. Oda, the creator of One Piece, has been directly involved in the production and casting, and it shows brilliantly.

Iñaki Godoy as Luffy hits every note flawlessly. The infectious smile, the innocent cluelessness that sometimes hides a sharp understanding, the stubborn mulish will, and his absolute loyalty shines through every scene. Whether he's dead serious protecting his friends or utterly clowning around at a party, Godoy's Luffy is exactly who he's supposed to be at every moment, and CONVINCING as such. You can believe that people end up following this sometimes-childish yet always reliable young man, and that he just may become King of the Pirates.

Emily Rudd as Nami brings the sensibility and sometimes frustrated sharpness of the most PRACTICAL member of the Straw Hat crew into beautiful focus. More, she's able to bring the depth of emotions that Luffy often tries to skate over (not because he doesn't feel them, but because his spirit, like his body, is resilient and bounces back quickly). In particular, she absolutely SELLS one of the most moving and crucial scenes in all of early One Piece when Nami breaks down after the vicious and cruel Arlong shows that all her sacrifices to protect her home are useless, and then finally swallows her pride and fear enough to tearfully, uncertainly say to Luffy, "...help me.".

Mackenyu's Roronoa Zoro is the perfect counterbalance, the quiet, serious, sometimes grim shadow to Luffy's erratic and brilliant light. He's not incapable of lighter moments, but his "serious swordsman" persona is vital to keeping the chaotic Luffy and some of the other crewmembers focused and on point when necessary. And he is, beyond doubt, serious about his art. The live-action show perfectly showcases this in another of the classic scenes, in which Zoro has his first duel with Dracule Mihawk, the acknowledged greatest living swordsman, and after he has been roundly defeated, accepts Mihawk's retributive strike head-on, for "wounds on the back are a swordsman's greatest shame".

Taz Skylar brings the cultured gourmet Sanji to life, with his cooking skills vital to the crew and his brilliant kick-focused combat equally vital when they get into a pinch. It appears that Oda and Netflix agreed that one aspect of Sanji needed to be kept as it originally was and not allowed to "flanderize": that is, Sanji is not the occasional lech/out of control skirt chaser that he sometimes is in the anime. Instead, he is a gentleman, obviously highly appreciative of female company, but always respectful and in control of himself. This is, in my view, a vast improvement over the anime.

Similarly, Jacob Gibson gives us a just slightly less comedic Usopp, which works beautifully in the live action context. I'm glad they didn't decide to mark him with a ludicrously long nose, as he has in the anime; that would've been a bit too much. Usopp wants to be a hero, but has less confidence than he needs and is, honestly, outclassed by the heavy hitters he's surrounded by. But he is far from useless, and the live action series gives him a chance to shine without changing his essential nature.

Honestly, I could go through the entire cast, from Nico Robin to Smoker to Arlong and Dory and Brogy and all the rest and keep repeating how wonderfully they bring these characters -- often ridiculous characters -- to life on the screen. It's casting fully equal to that in the early MCU, where even the people you thought might not pull it off turned out to be perfect for their roles.

There have been some people who complain about the individual casting choices; for myself, I think they're ... well, not to put too fine a point on it, idiots. I don't think I've EVER seen a better-cast show in my life.

And Netflix and their crews have to be given absolutely MAD props for keeping every ridiculous element of the world right there on screen, from Luffy's stretchy arms to Zoro's stupid three-sword combat to "Baroque Works" agents with the men having numbers and the women being named for days of the week and each one having an increasingly dorky way of symbolizing it -- down to Mr. 3 literally having his hair standing up in a giant "3" on his head and making Rube Goldberg wax sculptures for executing people, to having the "Unluckies" -- the execution squad of Baroque Works -- be a team of a sentient otter and vulture equipped with machine guns.

And they somehow make it WORK. Some of these things simply SHOULD NOT work on screen, but even as you're thinking "okay, that's just so stupid" you're still following the action and enjoying the actual show. Which is, of course, the POINT of One Piece.

Most importantly, they haven't removed the underlying anti-authoritarian, pro-humanity elements of the show, the ones that have always made One Piece a little bit more than just a shonen fighting series. It's still a show about caring for people over organizations, of protecting the weak rather than showing off strength, and so on.

They've somehow managed to trim and compress about 90 episodes of anime into less than 20 episodes of live action, and done it brilliantly.

Oh, the .01%? I wish they'd make use of a few more of the key pieces of music from the original show. They DO occasionally use part of "We Are", the original theme song, but I'd really like to hear a full-orchestral backed "Overtaken" or "The Very Very Very Strongest", too.

Looking forward to the third season.

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Repost:Project 2025 Commentary

Fri, 27 Mar 2026 13:24:21 GMT

Because it’s even more relevant now than it was a year ago, I post the link to my detailed review/commentary on the blueprint the current administration is following in its quest to destroy the country.

http://grandcentralarena.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Ryk-Spoor-Project-2025-Commentary.pdf

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Why I do not, and will not, use AI (as it exists now)

Fri, 27 Mar 2026 12:22:18 GMT

I posted this previously on FB, which is a reversal from my normal; I usually write my long posts here and point to them from FB. So, onward...

I do not use AI. And I will not use it.

This isn't because I don't see what I could do with it -- yes, despite its current limitations and flaws.

It's because (A) all the current AIs are built on a foundation of stealing other people's work in the name of "research" and then using it for commercial purposes -- including quite a number of my own books, and the artwork of many artists I know, respect, and have even in many cases used the services of.

(B) Our current society is structured such that the use of AI is in no way beneficial for anyone except a very, very small fraction of the population. From the point of view of its deployers, it's a money and time saving system. But the money and time it saves is in the work of the majority of the workforce.

There are those who will argue that X profession or Y profession will be resistant to AI intrusion (for instance, plumbers or electricians) because of the physical limitations of the job. And that's true, to an extent, but ONLY to an extent. We already have automated cars. They kinda suck in various ways, but there's no doubt that people are working constantly on improving autonomous driving; when that reaches the point that it's as safe or safer than human drivers, good-bye to 99% of the driving-based jobs. White collar jobs are far more vulnerable, and make up a HUGE portion of total jobs.

If we had a society that valued PEOPLE, this wouldn't be a big deal. Okay, you can't spend your time in an office filing forms, so now you can go home and have fun, maybe do some hobby you've wanted to do but didn't have the time for.

But our current society REQUIRES that you have "A Job" unless you're already quite wealthy.

And AI is a *general* innovation, not a *specific* one. If you have a specific innovation that, say, kills off the buggy whip market, there are usually new emergent jobs that will absorb the relatively small fraction of the population that used to work in that industry.

There is no possible way that AI will create more jobs than it disrupts, if it is at all effective in its roles. It WILL cause -- and is ALREADY causing -- significant layoffs, and eventually an unheard-of spike in unemployment.

The current administration and the techbros around them will have a "solution" to this, but it's most likely going to be "slave labor" with a new label. I'm not exaggerating; Elon Musk suggested that his proposed colonies would be populated by people from all walks of life... under what was just a relabeled form of indentured servitude.

So unless, and until, the most fundamental problems with it are solved, I do not, and will not, use AI for anything I can possibly avoid. No matter how fun it might be.

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Inescapable imperfection, or You Use What You Have, Not What You Dream

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 15:24:07 GMT

Rant behind a cut for space...

( read onward... )

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Mask of Ares: Third Snippet for the Re-Release!

Tue, 10 Mar 2026 12:00:13 GMT

Let's look in on the young lady who we only saw briefly in the prior chapter...

( ... she was a bit upset... )

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The Mask of Ares: Second Snippet for the Re-Release!

Tue, 03 Mar 2026 23:03:24 GMT

GODSWAR is now released. The Mask of Ares and The Spear of Athena are now available!

We continue snippeting with the first main chapter...

( Let's meet our actual protagonists... )

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The Mask of Ares: First Snippet for the Re-Release!

Mon, 02 Mar 2026 21:02:06 GMT

The GODSWAR dualogy is re-releasing tomorrow, and I'm doing some snippets and such to celebrate.

Today, it's the intro and first chapter of The Mask of Ares!

-------
( Click for more... )

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Resolving the Paradox of the Bad Dog

Wed, 25 Feb 2026 00:30:30 GMT

To take a completely different tack today, here is a scientific study performed by my family, particularly Gabe and myself.

All of us who own or are around dogs have experienced at least one, often many, moments in which the dog performs actions that may cause us to say they are a "bad dog".

This is, however, in direct opposition to the fact that all dogs are good dogs. If all dogs are good dogs, it follows that no dog can be a bad dog. Yet we are faced with evidence of the existence of naughty dogs quite often.

After extensive research, late-night discussions of theory, and probably too many cans of 1980s JOLT Cola, we are proud to report that we have successfully resolved this paradox with a breakthrough in canine physics.

Consider a dog D, traveling through a house H. D has a potential for Naughtiness, N, which is a complex function derived from multiple factors including the amount of attention A that D has received in time T, the presence of aggravating factors such as mail carriers, birds, vacuum cleaners, and such (or more serious ones such as mistreatment), distraction factors such as balls, squeaky toys, and stuffies, how hungry D may be, and the presence of temptations T such as unattended food, an unguarded trash can, and so forth.

Normally, N is relatively low. However, when the various factors align, N can rapidly rise to the point that it approaches a probability of 1 that D will perform a Naughty action and thus be a Bad Dog. For instance, D enters the kitchen where multiple dishes have been prepared. D is hungry, and the proximity of food increases N in synergy with this condition, but there are humans in the kitchen who pay attention to D, drawing off some of the potential N.

Consider, instead, if the food were laid out on the counter in preparation for a meal but the humans were not present. D is then unmoderated by additional attention, and as D's proximity to the food increases, N rises -- in this case according to the inverse square of the distance to the desired food item. D places their paws on the counter to examine the food more closely, and we can see that N quickly achieves a value at which Naughtiness is inevitable.

This is, however, in direct conflict with the inherent Goodness G of dog D. Goodness is, however, a single state, not a spectrum, as all dogs D are Very Good Dogs.

As we can see, then, this is a parallel situation seen in particle physics. A state transition must follow in which the Good Dog is no longer present.

But conservation of matter and energy requires that SOMETHING be present.

That something is the unitary quantum of Naughtiness, the inherent opposite to Good that is required by symmetry.

More importantly, as can be seen by the preceding discussion, despite there being many different factors and paths towards the accumulation of potential N, all of these eventually converge to a single value. There is only ONE such state, despite there being so many different dogs D in varied conditions of health, repletion, attention-gaining, and so on.

This entity we call the Negadog.

When the potential N reaches a unitary probability, a state transition occurs in which the Good Dog is replaced by the Negadog, which then performs the Naughty action. However, in the instant of performing the action, the potential N is discharged and the Negadog drops back to its potential state, returning the Good Dog.

This explains all the puzzling aspects of the paradox. The Good Dog is aware that something Naughty was there, but also that they have failed to stop the Negadog, because of course the Good Dog cannot coexist with the Negadog. Unfortunately for many Good Dogs, human perceptions are of course inadequate to perceive quantum transition phenomena, and to our slow perceptions it appears that the Good Dog has performed an action that makes them at least for the moment a Bad Dog.

Thus the common puzzlement of a dog when scolded. They know they have done nothing bad, but they know something bad has happened.

With this scientific breakthrough, the next step will be to determine ways in which the Negadog might be observed. Research is ongoing.

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Another AI Post -- on Assumptions and the Future

Sun, 15 Feb 2026 20:17:41 GMT

A discussion with a knowledgeable friend on this triggered the following post, which will cover a number of elements of both the technology and, perhaps more importantly, its uses and impacts.

( Read on... )

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"Traditional Publishing" -- what I expect when I hear that.

Thu, 05 Feb 2026 15:55:42 GMT

So here's todays discussion. It is in fact related to some personal experiences, but I'm not going into those here.

( Read more... )

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The Duty of a Civilization and Weaponized Naivete

Tue, 13 Jan 2026 14:25:55 GMT

Cut for length...

( Read more... )

The "demand for perfection -- but only on one side" approach is, in fact, a major tactic and stumbling block in modern politics, and I should probably make that another post.

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What current AI should, and should not, be used for -- ideal and realistic

Tue, 23 Dec 2025 18:08:13 GMT

Regardless of whether "AI" ever actually becomes intelligent, rather than just being an increasingly good "predict the kind of thing you want or should see out of this query" machine (a completely separate and also increasingly complicated subject), LMM and related "huge trained neural network" AIs are here and people have invested unfathomable amounts of money into them. Even if the bubble explodes, these AIs will still exist.

So what SHOULD they be used for?

Well, right off we get a conflict between "in the ideal world" and "in the current world".

You see, an awful lot of the conflict about AI right now -- the copyright suits, the arguments about using it for doing desk work, for finding ways to emulate dead, or even still living but aged, actors, etc. -- REALLY boils down to this:

Our society has no support network. So anything that humans do that sustains them is specifically a matter of SURVIVAL.

It's not just a matter of writing fun stories or making silly pictures. It's a matter of that being a significant survival element, perhaps the ONLY survival element, that many people have to keep them from disaster. Thus, any device or method that looks to make the individual's contribution to this work less valuable is a direct threat.

For AI, the problem is that it is QUALITATIVELY, as well as quantitatively, different from prior technological advances. It is GENERALIZABLE to tons of tasks that were until now almost entirely the domain of human endeavor. Trained LLMs are getting better and better at recognizing and copying and adapting multiple different types of writing - not just individual human styles, but different kinds of writing -- professional proposals, book reports, novels, patents, etc. -- and there's a LOT of people that threatens, and the number of people whose jobs are at risk is increasing with every improvement of the technology.

It is also inherently FAR more deployable for such tasks. If I want to make, say, a Terminator bot, even assuming I have the AI for it available, building a militarily robust, armed, flexible, powerful independent robotic platform is TOUGH, and takes a long time, just like retooling a factory.

But if your AIs are already generating text and can format it into Word, it takes basically NO effort to replace the guy at the desk with the AI writing software package.

In the IDEAL world, human survival and basic happy living would be ensured -- the robotic deployment and increase in productivity would be partially diverted to supporting all the people involved. Such people could then write what they wanted, paint what they wanted, with or without AI assistance or interference, and it would not impact their ability to live well.

That's not the way it currently works, though, so I am very much against the current trend to try to find ways to use AI to displace existing human workers in areas the humans depend on.

However, there ARE areas in which modern large-trained-neural network systems absolutely can and should be used even now.

For example, AIs are extraordinarily good at pattern discovery, and can also be trained to ANALYZE the patterns to see if a coherent framework emerges.

This is ideal for things like mathematical and physical/materials research, especially in the theoretical areas or the design realms where much of the problem is that the overall subject area is far, far too huge for a human being to comprehend. An AI properly designed could, at the least, pull out multiple "huh, that's funny" areas in a given field and draw a human's attention to them for further analysis. Some AIs are already showing the ability to perform what appear to be solid mathematical proofs, which is quite an interesting capability and has implications not just for mathematicians but for things like quantum computation and materials design.

AIs of this nature can also probe and model the structure of an astonishing number of chemical compounds and, perhaps more importantly, metamaterial structures, to discover materials that can do things we didn't know were possible -- or ones we did know were possible, but were having problems finding practical methods to achieve. New antibiotics, perhaps; optical metamaterials with negative indices of refraction; superconductors and super-insulators of both electricity and heat. This is the kind of thing AI is properly made for -- locating patterns within masses of data or of processes that are far too complex for human beings to view as a gestalt.

The same thing applies to medical advances; understanding the complexities of modern medicine is mindboggling, and what's needed is a way to somehow locate the important anomalies within a vast ocean of data. AI can do that.

Back in the 1700s-1800s, it was possible for one bright person to know pretty much everything in the sciences, and thus be able to make cross-connections between the fields, synthesizing knowledge from the combination. That's an impossible thing for one human being to do now.

But a human with an AI to help make the connections? That's not ridiculous at all.

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A personal record...

Thu, 11 Dec 2025 15:37:57 GMT

... I don't think I've ever been working on FIVE books at the same time ever before. Currently in-process are:

Light of Reason: The next Jason Wood novel/collection, this one starts with "Bait and Switch" and so far includes "Burnout" and, in process, "Feet on the Ground", with one bridge section. Not sure if there'll be one or two more pieces in this one or if those will be for the third and probably last purely Jason collection.

Adventurer's Academy: The story of a group of would-be Adventurers at the often-mentioned Academy during the same time period as my other fantasy series on Zarathan, featuring Lalira Revyne and Spinesnarl Mudswimmer from my short story "The Adventurer and the Toad".

The Impractical Quest: The tale of Enochlis Book-Bound, a bilarel (ogre) who wants to be a wizard despite the limitations of his people. Enochlis is seen also in the second book of the Spirit Warriors trilogy.

Articles of Faith: Fifth book in the Arenaverse series, picking up shortly after Shadows of Hyperion left off.

Unity of Vengeance: Xavier Ross actually gets to go after the people who killed his brother.

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AI, Testing, and Intelligence

Sat, 06 Dec 2025 22:53:17 GMT

Below, with a cut for length...

( Read more... )

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Elon is right, and also very wrong.

Thu, 04 Dec 2025 16:34:56 GMT

A fairly long lecture...

( ... click here to read the rest... )

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The Straw Hats are not "conservatives".

Wed, 29 Oct 2025 14:51:39 GMT

Cut for length...

( ... see the actual post! )

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I don't pray...

Tue, 28 Oct 2025 14:33:36 GMT

... but I'm sending all the good-luck thoughts I can to those in Jamaica.

Hurricane Melissa is now in the top five strongest storms ever in the Atlantic, with central pressure at 896mb and sustained winds over 180, with a record measured gust of 241mph.

This is basically an F-4 tornado many miles wide surrounded by F-3 tornado winds for a long, long ways. It will be dumping more than five FEET of rain on some parts of Jamaica over the next couple days.

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Went to the No Kings 2 Protest

Mon, 20 Oct 2025 12:45:18 GMT

Specifically to the one here in Troy, NY.

Troy isn't a large city, so we didn't draw the huge crowds you see in the big metropolises, but there were between 1,000 and 1,500 people crowded into the little Riverfront Park area -- for Troy, that IS huge.

Attendance was of all ages -- I saw one grandmotherly woman likely ten to twenty years older than me with a sign saying "Why Do I *STILL* Have To Be Marching In Protests?", and there were people the age of my various kids and everything in between.

There was no violence, no confrontations with ICE or police -- in fact, the police simply watched, kept the roads safe and clear, and made sure everything moved as smoothly as possible, even when the protesters streamed all the way across the Green Island Bridge and back. The organizers took pains to remind the crowd that not only were we nonviolent, our job was de-escalation even if threatened. Fortunately, that caution didn't need to be used.

The crowd was united in its disapproval of the current regime of lunatics and traitors and showed it in their signs and in their costumes. Scooby-Doo was there, as were the expected T-Rexes, giant frogs, and also a Minion and multiple others. I wore the Straw Hats' Jolly Roger as a cape, plus a straw hat. There were multiple One Piece fans around who commented on it -- one young lady carried a sign that said "The only king I want is LUFFY, The Pirate King!".

The speakers were for the most part energetic, articulate, and even understandable, which is often a problem for me in public venues. One gentleman dressed in Revolutionary War getup read the various charges against the King, pointing out how Mad King Trump is echoing a lot of Mad King George's offenses. New York Democratic politicians actually showed up, Representative Paul Tonko probably the most notable.

In some ways, it was really like attending a folk festival, including some songs in between speeches. There was anger, but not directed at anyone there, only at the crazy people in Washington who are not only damaging our country, but embarrassing the hell out of all of us. Forget economics, it'll take decades to live down having this bozo in the White House at all.

Mostly it as filled with positive energy, people here to have their voices heard, and to be part of a larger movement against our incompetent fascist regime.

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Current AI leads to a Singular(ity) Issue...

Fri, 17 Oct 2025 12:48:56 GMT

Cut for length!
( Does this compute? )

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Wasn't as bad as it could be...

Fri, 03 Oct 2025 12:17:04 GMT

... but that meeting was sure bad. As many have noted, some of the expressions in that room were ones you NEVER want to see on the faces of flag officers. Especially the Commandant of Marines.

They didn't explicitly go for a loyalty test -- but they did threaten the top eight hundred officers and staff, which is always a great way to endear yourself to the military.

They didn't present a grand strategy to usher in a new imperialist era... because they're focused on literally sending the army against Democratic cities.

They didn't have a mass firing... just a lunatic ranting third rate macho bullcrap as new regulation instructions that are specifically targeted in ways that will eliminate a vast number of POC and women from the ranks, while doing nothing at all to actually improve the functioning of the military.

They didn't announce martial law... but they did announce "Geneva Convention? More like Geneva Suggestion!".

This was simultaneously frightening and just plain embarrassing. I don't understand how Hegseth, at least, didn't realize how insanely stupid his whole act was. Trump has dementia, so at least he's got an excuse for being unaware of anything around him.

Gods above and below, what a clown-car of banal horror.

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But wait, there's more!

Mon, 29 Sep 2025 12:14:25 GMT

Apparently, unless his Secret Service can somehow argue him out of it, our Dear Leader is going to be attending the giant military meeting at Quantico and address all the officers.

Jesus H. Particular Christ on a pogo stick.

Now it really IS the ENTIRE chain of command, several layers deep, in ONE location. Less than a week's notice for a Presidential visit, and barely a week for the whole gathering.

There are SO many ways this can go wrong, even ignoring the "why the hell are they even HAVING this meeting" speculation.

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Every time I think they've hit the bottom of stupid...

Fri, 26 Sep 2025 13:21:15 GMT

... they start drilling.

This time it's the incompetent Secretary of War calling together effectively ALL of the flag officers throughout all branches of the military into a single meeting, in ONE WEEK, publicly announced.

I can't even BEGIN to address all of the reasons this is stupid beyond easy belief, and also highly concerning in other ways, but... holy Jebus.

First of all, wherever the meeting is held -- barring it being a hidden conference room in Cheyenne Mountain, maybe -- you have just created the biggest damn military strategic and tactical target the modern world has EVER seen. You literally have gathered the ENTIRE chain of command, minus the President (who in this case is worse than useless anyway), into ONE ROOM. A single attack could literally behead the USA's military machine in a few seconds.

There's a lot of jokes about how the top brass are expendable, and there's always a few that are, but the fact is if you take away HUNDREDS of people at the top of a regimented, strictly-organized military you will create chaos. There's SO many parts of that machine that assume a reasonably smooth flow of information from top to bottom and back up with carefully-designed succession backups.

But not succession backups fhree or four deep. The PRESIDENT is like a dozen deep, but most officers have one or two people who can step into their places and reasonably well catch the load. A lot of THOSE are people at or near that officer's level.

If you're taking away ALL the people at the top several levels, there's no backup or precedent for that kind of "beheading" strike.

So that's ONE level of stupid.

A level of CONCERNING is that we have no idea of the REASON for this meeting. Why the hell would you suddenly summon every single ranking officer to you?

I can't think of any reason that's GOOD. This could be a "show us this loyalty" moment, where they basically want to make sure every one of the top brass are behind Trump--- or are removed from office and replaced.

This could be a global strategy meeting (recognizing that Hegseth's idea of strategy will be barely superior to Trump's) in which they're going to plan some ridiculously overarching plan to get rid of *ALL* of "America's Enemies" in some bargain-basement James Bondian scheme.

I don't THINK it could be a Vlad Tepesch situation -- we're not quite back in the quaint era of executing all your enemies in a single ballroom -- but I am absolute stymied trying to imaging a halfway sane reason for doing this.

Our current government, ladies, gentlemen, friends, foes: a government of the grifted, by the grifters, for the grifters, run by clowns that would embarrass Pennywise and the Joker.

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Why outlawing "antifa" is not only bad, but stupid...

Tue, 23 Sep 2025 13:15:22 GMT

Cut for length, discussion below...
( Read onward... )

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Finally all three good links for Demons of the Past!

Fri, 19 Sep 2025 14:22:43 GMT

There was an ongoing problem with Amazon's listings of my space opera, Demons of the Past (Revelation, Revolution, Retribution), making the three of them have the same cover and confusing would-be purchasers.

Finally it's straightened out, and here's the proper links:

#1, Revelation: https://www.amazon.com/Demons-Past-Revelation-Ryk-Spoor-ebook/dp/B0DN6Q6ZZ7
#2, Revolution: https://www.amazon.com/Demons-Past-Revolution-Ryk-Spoor-ebook/dp/B0DN6SVXF6
#3, Retribution: https://www.amazon.com/Demons-Past-Retribution-Ryk-Spoor-ebook/dp/B0DN6PL1ZT

This is the work I spent the most hours on over the years, rewriting it at least five times since its first draft in about 1982 or so (and the idea having been first thought of in the late 70s).

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"Why does this only happen in the USA?"

Thu, 11 Sep 2025 12:49:35 GMT

As I mentioned in my prior post, this event and discussion gave me a bit of an epiphany. It's probably NOT an original one -- I'm sure other people have discussed this point -- but I personally haven't seen it discussed, so I'm going to do so here.

The perennial argument following any public shooting here (slightly less for individually targeted people like Mr. Kirk, but still present) almost always boils down to staunch defenders of the Second Amendment versus people who just want to NOT see random children or adults shot down on a daily basis. And one of the most common soundbite/talking points will be things like "Nothing could be done to stop it, says only country where this happens".

The Second Amendment defenders will trot out their own points, including "kids carried guns to school regularly back in the day and you didn't have lots of school shootings" and "guns don't shoot people, people do" and so on.

A lot of this ends up raising the question: WHY does this happen here in the USA so often, and so rarely elsewhere -- even in places where there are a lot of guns? What's so different about the USA compared to all these other countries?

Well, you know, there are actually a LOT of differences between the USA and most other countries; perhaps the most obvious is that we're a short-term (in the historic sense) patchwork of a lot of different subcultures, divided by states (which function as semi-independent countries INSIDE the country) as well as by background, with populations ranging from surviving Native American populations who are STILL at or near the bottom of the pecking order despite being the ones who were living here when Europeans first arrived, to the descendants of those Europeans, descendants of entire *cities* worth of slaves, descendants of slave owners, refugees, and more.

But in this case, I think the difference that drives the increase in public shootings is something that's so very American that we don't even think about it as a problem -- because it's just the way things have been going here.

Most other civilized countries have safety nets for people. The most obvious is healthcare. Here, heathcare is gated -- and often destructively so. Most other countries have universal healthcare in one form or another.

Most countries also have some other forms of social support -- things that generally reduce, if not eliminate, the number of people for whom the loss of a job equates to instant poverty and living on the street.

Most countries have wide-based educational support so that people who want to learn don't have to go into a hundred thousand dollars of debt just to finish college.

We -- primarily driven, it's now obvious, by the Heritage Foundation and their associates since the 1980s, though starting with RMN in the late 60s - early 70s -- have been steadily eroding the social safety net.

"What's that got to do with shootings?"

Well, more and more people are feeling more and more pressure. If you have a FEW people in desperate circumstances, this usually is a self-limiting problem -- there's many people around who can spare a bit of money, time, or resources, and most of them aren't under desperate strain.

But if more, and more, and more people are under mounting pressure -- "how can I afford the operation?" "I have to keep this job or my whole family loses insurance!" "I have to put up with everything at work because if I miss one payment on my rent I'm out", then there's less "give" in the system. There's more of a feeling of danger, of fear, of potential loss around every corner.

And that means the fragile ones and the angry angry ones will ALSO have less support to get past their own crises. Mom and Dad don't have the energy to really listen to and understand little Jack because they're both working in grinding jobs that force them to act as though the pressure is perfectly normal -- and they're having their own personal problems, that weaken both of them just when their kids need their strength. Or maybe there's JUST Mom or JUST Dad, which makes it harder.

In short, what we're seeing is the increasing sounds of strain on the very fabric of society, as we disassemble the supports that used to keep the strain from becoming unsupportable. THAT is why an increasing number of isolated, angry, terrified people are breaking in such a violent way. No one hears them until they shoot, and even if someone did hear them, no one had anything left to give them as support and relief.

When you create a pressure cooker and keep stoking the fires, the relief valve starts to scream.

And that's the warning before it all explodes.

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