Talk politics.

You can't what? Have fun? Sure you can, just give it a try, it's easy. Just mock the stupid and go from there.

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I know, I was teasing. Maybe I should've used one of these :p

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op-tech-glitch.livejournal.com

It's especially interesting when the mainstream media falls for it too (and tons more amusing when Fox Noise does).

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Please tell me you have examples of this happening. Especially the last part.

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op-tech-glitch.livejournal.com

Ask and ye shall receive:

http://www.businessinsider.com/apparently-fox-nation-doesnt-know-the-onion-is-fake-news-2010-11

http://www.thewrap.com/tv/article/fox-news-site-posts-satiricial-onion-obama-story-amid-real-news-22840

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/11/26/fox-nation-readers-confuse-onion-article-real-news/

http://freakoutnation.com/2010/11/27/fox-news-freaks-out-over-the-onion-article/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j10A6eINUVw

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sophia-sadek.livejournal.com

I'll never forget the day one of my neighbors approached me with appalling news about the Bush administration he had read in the Onion. The look on his face was priceless after I let him know that the Onion is a satirical publication.

BTW, why don't you consider Paft's posting to be Friday LULZ?

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Because the fun tag was not used.

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op-tech-glitch.livejournal.com

Back in early 2003 I saw Aaron "Boondocks" MacGruder speak and he said the Onion was where he got his news from. Got a nice little ovation for that one.

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meus-ovatio.livejournal.com

HE GOT DIVORCED ALREADY?!

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I KNOW!!! It's shameful isn't it?

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wow, they been oniontrolled.

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the onion's not real? is this some sort of joke?

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Oh...Do you need a moment? I know this may be hard for you to take in. *pats head* It'll all be OK.

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aha, you're one of those, quick to discredit the source because it disagrees with your politcal views.

the onion is america's finest news source.

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the onion is america's finest news source

I thought that was FOX news?

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muse-misery.livejournal.com

Where do you think Fox gets most of their stories, hmmmm?

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telemann.livejournal.com

Now now, Roger Ailes stays up late every night writing the next day's talking points memo!

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no, they're fair and balanced.

anyone can be fair and balanced, but only one can be finest.

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You know, I never noticed that before. Good catch. And "fair and balanced" will always make me laugh.

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you need to be more open-minded and give the onion a chance.

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OK, but I'm keeping my mind firmly closed about FOX.

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russj.livejournal.com

This one really makes me wonder about our society:

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This one really makes me wonder about context.

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-because there is a view that animals killed in factories are done fairly humanely. There are monitors to make sure the animals aren't being mistreated and such.

There was a big controversy a while back, especially over bow hunting, where people claimed it was hugely painful to animals. Guns are of course when a hunter misses.

So this definitely could be from that angle and suddenly it doesn't look so silly. But I guess that wouldn't be a very good propaganda item against "THOSE LIBERALS ARGHGHGHG!!!" would it? :(

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I think you're giving too much credit to the letter writer. I think it's entirely possible they are just that stupid.

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And this is why context is important.

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meus-ovatio.livejournal.com

Yes, your fine powers of nuance allowed you to "contextualize" the verb "to harm" to meaning something else other than "being killed".

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Its very common to use it that way.

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root-fu.livejournal.com

Reminds me of failbook (http://www.failbook.com).

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htpcl.livejournal.com

Which in turn reminds me of UnCyclopedia.

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muse-misery.livejournal.com

LOL. I was fooled once by an Onion article posted here; Missed the tag. It was something about the Repubs and seemed likely. Can't remember what about, though!

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Probably the same one I was. It really didn't seem all that out of line from other real stories about them. Which is a sad state of affairs.

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omnot.livejournal.com

The Onion has a fine tradition of pushing the boundaries of Poe's Law.

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Saw X-Men First Class. It was completely and utterly awesome. I already like Magneto more than Professor X in the comics, and this made it moreso.

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Been working further on Up With the Star. Thus far the USA's joined WWII on the side of the Central Powers. Germany, Austria, Hungary, Britain, Japan, the USA against Russia, Italy, Nationalist China, Korea, and the Viet Minh. World War I came later, but overall technological progress in the alternate timeline is actually faster.

Russia starts off with T-34s and its main battle tank is an earlier appearance of the T-55. The US main battle tank is an equivalent of the Patton, and it's a World War II without the apocalyptic mass-murderous war to the last ditch element between two sides which can't bring it to a decisive end even with nukes involved. US production and Russian manpower *and* production make it impossible for that to happen.

Russia's leader is much more a Benito Mussolini than an Adolf Hitler, except he really *does* have millions of bayonets and tanks and all the goodies, meaning Russia's murderous, but not genocidal, and relatively tame to Jews (because Kornilov's a pragmatist, not a batshit raving insane drug addict). Ironically this means Russian armies *aren't* willing to fight to 100% casualties and the Central Powers have no real reason to want a war for unconditional surrender....because Russia's shown it can adhere to peace treaties faithfully. Which Germany, natch, did not do. At all.

It's kind of interesting to write a war with Generals Patton, Lettow-Vorbeck, and Nathan Bedford Forrest III serving together with Admirals Halsey, Nagumo, and Raeder against Yudenich, Rennenkampf, Zhukov, and Tuchachevsky. With proto-Cold War technology used by the USA and Imperial Russia, and to write a WWII that's essentially an updated WWI, with more moral ambiguity, not Russian-Hitler v. Allies.

What puts things into real irony is that I call the timeline "A different type of Civil War timeline" and only one guy on the site I've seen has realized *why* I call it thus. The Civil War's ending changes the world, but it's not the Civil War itself that changes everything. It's the survival of Archduke Maximilian, who has his brother's longevity, less Habsburg cuckoolanderness, and keeps Austria together just enough and just enough opposed to Germany and pro-French to make the world completely different.

That the US Civil War ends in November of 1864 isn't what changes the world. It's what happens south of the border that does that.

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Also been working on the kind of powers wielded by the supervillains of the Omniverse Tales. Thus far the most powerful one I've actually used in the stories is The Scouring. It's a magical type of nuke, but one that well.....scours everything of *all* life. Down to bacteria and nematodes. Like a regular fission nuke, the thing leaves a changed environment covered in black, as opposed to green rocks. Like radiation, scouring-energy leaves an after effect.

It doesn't produce zombie plagues, it instead reduces whatever steps into it into ashes, as it's a literal life-scourer. Nothing that lives can move through it. Zombies, OTOH, actually *can* move through it, as can vampires. Because they're not alive. So can bomb-disposal robots and UAVs. A bird flies over it, the sky gets full of ashes.

Worm tunnels into it, no more worm.

The really unpleasant side of that power is that it's a magical spell that can be learned by *anybody* with the power to wield it and it's actually *not* working according to Equivalent Exchange. Anyone who learns enough magic can be their own nuke.

As it's magical, not scientific, there is a clear boundary which if you're past it, you'll end up blinded, but alive. Touch the barrier, you disintegrate into ashes.

Another principle of Omniverse Magic is the Ring of Gyges trick, where the villains limited to needing invitations to cross over thresholds leave magic rings on the thresholds. If picked up by people and taken in, there's their invitation as the writing on the rings is exactly that.

Though for actual superpowers, most of them in worlds where they show up aren't actually that impressive in the modern era, guns and the like kill people dead regardless, with invisibility and some other powers outside what powers *are* seen. So shapeshifters are from Beyond the Stars, not merely life as it is. And if someone *creates* that power, it generally ends awkwardly and the laws of physics bite.

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Another key point is the difference between flashier people with powers and ones that....aren't. For instance the evil Cosmic Horrors tend to use a glowing teleportation because most of the time they have enemies who can't really actually hurt them. As they can survive a sawed-off shotgun or a Tsar Bomba in the face/at ground zero without a singe or even damage, they're able to be show-offs.

When actually facing threats, the glowing energy drama spell disappears and they move via an invisible teleportation. Similarly, phasing can be rather disturbing to sight to see, as the ones with glowing energy warn people. The ones that don't are much more dangerous.

In terms of all around most dangerous supers, the ones that control electromagnetism, the Strong Nuclear Force, the weak nuclear force, and gravity are the most dangerous ones bar reality warpers, as while the latter can actually manipulate the very innate things of reality themselves in Tex Avery-style shenanigans that become a source of existential horror, superhumans/metanormals that control the four fundamental forces of nature control *Forces. Of. Nature.* There is no ability to actually counter that except with other guys of that sort.

An Omniverse Magneto could be a Reed Richards type, whose devices only work with him because he's a self-generating wielder of electricity, or infrared radiation (and the invisible, who need special goggles to see, are visible to wielders of the EM spectrum. They can see in UV or infrared or what have you).

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I might note in terms of fights with people with superpowers, someone who's really, really high up there but has never had that kind of fight before v. someone who has had that kind of fight before and/or knows how to wield their powers to fight but might be much weaker or even against an ordinary person without any powers at all can get their asses handed to them.

On the other hand, if that person tries to fight say, a revived immortal demon of war and thinks that the demon doesn't know how to fight modern-style, they tend to be curbstomped. Unlike in the Salvation war, demons and gods that specialize in those certain things attain power and perfection in them far beyond anything that a human can or will.

Give a demon or god of war a platoon and that demon or god can take over the world. Give a demon or god an army group, that demon or god is pretty much unstoppable. Humans are biologically required to have other things to do. Demons......aren't. Neither are Gods.

Most Omniverse monsters can be killed by depleted uranium and sufficiently heavy modern firepower. The ones that escape entirely unharmed, however, are beings outside the material realm altogether, to whom physics and magic are options and rules to be broken, like pie-crusts.

Wizards and witches and magical creatures have their own law, and creatures of magic are primarily those of myths (meaning vampires are hairy, ugly, smelly peasants who are literal walking corpses, with all the nastiness that implies. To up the ante with the squick, people react to them just like they to do Edward Cullen in Twilight. That is if Edward Cullen were short, squat, hairy, and full of maggots, werewolves are magically cursed with pelts that work because of the curse. If they try it without a magic pellet, they don't transform, things like that).

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telemann.livejournal.com

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