That’s pretty close to how they built the Enterprise-D for season three of Picard. When asked, IIRC Geordie admitted it was a mix of spare parts, and a Galaxy-class that was supposed to have been decommissioned.
(in-story, it was for a Federation-sanctioned “famous ships” event)
There’s a What-If where he is thus rescued, and the comic assures us he never became a villain. Then the next comic was a sequel and pulled an diabolus ex machina to make him a villain. That was cheating.
There’s another. Read it before you read this, which is my take on what happens after.
Cap and Bucky and the Commandos take Erik with them, his powers are very erratic and limited to making things explode and pushing metal away because torture does not teach him refined details; also, he has real difficulty using them less than full blast, and he passes out, often, after. They have to carry him a lot.
Cap and the Commandos wonder about why the weapon was a boy. Worm Erik’s story out of him the first night. After Erik tells how Schmidt murders his mother, and bursts into tears, Cap tries to console him by telling him of how Dr. Erskine was murdered, and he tries to fight his murderers.
They are chased by Dr. Klaus Schmidt, everyone who owes him a favor, everyone who wants him to owe a favor, everyone who wants to appropriate Erik as useful, and everyone who thinks a Jewish boy is too much of an embarrassment.
When Zola tries to capture him while they are on a train, Bucky falls, Erik uses metal to pull him back up (after exploding Zola’s gun in his face), and passes out, cold, for 50 hours. (Literally cold at first — clammy to the touches, shallow breathing, thready pulse.)
He recovers, is gleeful but weak as a kitten, and the Commandos are torn between strangling him and encouraging him.
It is a big break through on his powers — but Bucky had barely left the bedside during those 50 hours because he didn’t want to die but really didn’t want a boy to die in his place. He masters more refinements, including less than full strength, and never passes out again, but spends a lot more time being carried by the Commandos (six mother hens with but one chick, he grumbles). They do various tasks to help various Resistance groups in return for their help. Erik names himself Magneto to the Resistance. (Cap doesn’t entirely approve, he thought Erik was thinking of himself as a weapon).
When they are about to disembark for England, Schmidt catches up, literally on the docks. Erik deduces he’s a mutant and stops their shooting at him. Schmidt tries to lure him over, telling him he’s proud of him and that he had to kill his mother because she held him back, making Erik so furious he has a hard time controlling his powers again, so Cap and Bucky each take a hand to soothe him, and Erik shoots the coin down Schmidt’s throat and chokes him to death. Gabe sings a lullaby alongside to help him keep his calm.
Back in England, it is broadly intimidated that they should pack the weapon off to the lab for study by avoiding public attention. So Cap introduces him to the public with the biggest publicity he can — fortunately, there’s an unexploded bomb in a public place that Erik can handle nicely. They told Erik that it was publicity reasons to pump him up, but the generals in question betray the truth not so much by what they say as by their fury. Cap looks innocent, Bucky glowers, the other Commandos laugh behind their hands — Erik looks from face to face and is very quiet.
They try to cope. (There is some reason why Erik doesn’t just hop over and start working his way down the Nazi hierarchy from Hitler with permanent consequences. Probably magic.) Erik wants the radio to broadcast why Jews and others should not get on the trains. He gets put off with talk about WWI atrocity propaganda, and lack of evidence. Then he wants evidence. They put him off with talk about strategy and supplies.
Meanwhile, Bucky arranged to adopt Erik as his ward — he still felt guilty about the 50 hours — Cap helped, and even arranged to be his guardian if anything happened. Cap might be a little jealous of the way Erik took over the role as “person whose welfare Bucky worries about,” but then, he worries about Erik, too.
One day, someone walks into the room where he’s supposed to be studying school work, and find a picture book of the Little Red Hen open to the page, “I’ll do it myself!” said the Little Red Hen. Suddenly supplies are less important. The Invaders and Commandos are sent to bring him back. Captain America explains that they must bring him back as efficiently as possible — that may mean doing what he’s trying to do, as faster than fighting. (They also find he brought some reporters with him, promising them the scoop of the war.)
Then they arrive in Auschwitz, and they would have sworn it was more efficient to help than fight if they had found Erik unconscious. They are too shocked to talk about it. They didn’t even arrive at a camp after it had stopped operating.
They find him busily trying to direct things, and the reporters trying to document. They help. They pack off the able-bodied adults to the Resistance with the guns. (The guards and the rest were either killed fighting or were shot and killed by their former prisoners — while trying to escape.) And the rest are carried off in large metal boxes to England. (This includes a Jewish woman named Rose. She helped organize the evacavees.)
Back in England, Erik and others talk about the other camps, and the Allies organize a Great Liberation Raid that hits the major death camps, with more reporters to document. Hits all the major camps in rapid succession because Erik warns they will kill prisoners if it’s known.
The rescued dub Erik the Liberator, and much propaganda is made.
In the displaced persons camp, one day when Erik was visiting, a beautiful girl named Magda claim to know Erik, got a lot of grief about it, and Erik recognized her and was delighted she was alive. Rose, who was doing a lot of the organizing stuff, realized that she would get even more grief and adopted her as her ward. Bucky and Rose see a lot of each other because of their wards.
The Allies manage to divert Erik to mostly sabotaging German factories far behind lines, so he faces fewer guns. (Cap and the Commandos really approve of that) Nazis attempt to ambush him, but the first attempts try to lure him to places on the pretext there’s a factory there, and don’t realize that the metal difference is vivid to him. He’s careful after that.
Peggy Carter had squired Erik around England so he could learn more about factories and how to damage them without giving away his plans by flying about England, and she dated Cap.
He also lifts supplies to the Resistance fighters.
Every now and again he raids an atrocity site. Particularly when he’s alerted to one by one James “Lucky Jim” Howletts. He likes him because he can contact the Resistance and pack off the able-bodied. Captain America does not approve. Then he is caught between Erik’s overenthusiastic grabbing at this way to atone and worry that he set him on the path with the talk of Dr. Erskine, and the knowledge that he didn’t know what else he could have said that would have had even that much benefit. So he joins Bucky in the role of person who worries.
The Nazis put in all out efforts to make new supers.
he Nazis made it to Himalayas using some arcane form of transport. When other people arrived at the city of the Inhumans, they found no bones; the Inhumans had taken off with it.
They try experiments on Slavonic untermenschen — and Erik raids and frees them. There are seven, they take the name The Forest Knights, and they individually adopt names like Firebird, Sunna, Marya Morvena, etc.
There is a Slavonic revolt basically where Nazi Germany wanted an Eastern Wall against the USSR
When asked at a press conference about Liberator’s part, they say, “What is Liberator? 12. We are fighting without him.”
Actually Lucky Jim clued him in that it would be a good time to sabotage factories in France so he went a little wild, but that’s all.
War ends a lot earlier.
With the war over, Rose and Bucky marry. They work at helping displaced children.
Steve and Peggy married, Steve talks to Howard Stark about a possibly scholarship, and Erik goes to college and gets a doctorate before he turns 20, and then he marries Magda.
His doctoral thesis is reinvented the superserum — his powers let him analyze the Vitarays.
He meets Professor X while Charles is still a child, and they study mutants. There is much to-do about how dangerous the serum would be to mutants, so there is much to ensure mutants are properly diagnosed.
Some people observe the serum may become the remedial treatment for people not born mutants. They discover ways to make it give new powers.
Rose and Bucky learned law about helping children. Erik turns to them whenever there’s a mutant child who needs legal help. Or otherwise superpowered.)
Cap married Peggy, they had a son James Joseph “Jamie” Rodgers. He married Wanda. They had seven children.
Erik offered the Moon’s Blue Area to the Hulk, where he lives happily and does a TV show called “Professor Hulk Explains the Universe.”
I’m not sure about the Widow. Indeed, I think after Eastern Europe revolted under the aegis of the Eastern European supers, Stalin fell down a flight of stairs one day. Suspicion fell on a superheroine called Vila, but nothing was proven — even though it was clear that all the other Allied superheroes had been set up with alibis so suspicion didn’t fall on them. Could there have been a Red Room with a much weaker USSR?
I imagined for a moment someone proposing the Accords in my universe where Cap and the Commandos rescued Erik from the Nazis, and my conclusion was that the instant response is “Who gets to tell Erik?” followed by dropping the matter.
Not a BEM. I’d be happy with just one in a nice dress to read books beside. That also just happens to be tolerant of pew pew, memes, and serial killer cats.
A quick note that Rod Blagojevich is, in fact, not in prison for trying to sell Obama’s Senate seat. He was, but Trump pardoned him during Trump’s first term. From what I understand, the explanation given for the pardon was that Blagojevich’s prison term was excessively long when compared with the sentences often handed down for more serious crimes.
Must be why social media has been flooded with Europe Is Better opinion pieces disguised as news stories. Just yesterday on Instagram was greeted with a “Finland has been scientifically ranked as the happiest country on Earth with America fallen to eleventy hundredth place” (Source: Trust me, bro.) Followed by a slew of “Look at this poor photogenic person who died because greedy capitalists raised the price of his insulin/asthma/whatever meds! He’d still be alive if he lived in a country with Universal Healthcare (yeah him and Alfie Evans) rounded off with a even “Kindergardeners in France eat gourmet meals” (bunch of French people in the comments calling bullshit on that one.)
Finland, or what I saw of it, is a lovely country in summer, and great for winter recreation like cross-country skiing in winter, but I’m not sure “happiest country” fits into that. The people were polite, but not as cheerful as, oh, Poles or Lithuanians. YMMV.
There are literal books on all the ghost towns in some parts of the US.
Now, obviously it must be an apples and oranges situation, with a mental filter that he does not explicitly describe where he is talking about buildings in active use, that people are living in.
I had some other reactions like that. One, his view of polite. (I am probably fairly rude, and poorly socialized, all factors considered.)
I figure that the other people in the UK may work hard, and the issue might be that the lunatics there are more equipped to just take away everything that someone worked for. And have been wrecking more of the wealth that people produce there.
I think my main takeaway is that Americans feel we have more remedy for disputes, and that covid was bad for the mental health of Americans and of UK folk. But, you would expect that, because those are my priors, and I can be pretty careless about just accepting that my priors aren’t falsified by new information.
It is interesting and a little healing to get another view of relative matters.
So, after going back to Portugal after being in the US as an exchange student I found Portuguese scarily rude, even compared to the last place I’d stopped: NYC.
In fact they were ruder than the person in Portugal I KNEW to be the most polite of our circle.
I’m serious.
He’s right one this. And both Portugal and the UK have got exponentially worse the last 40 years.
I’m sure it helps that WV people have a decent view of English people. The entire group of English accents acts like a +1 to charisma, upon most people in the US who have no reason to think otherwise.
And of course, once people are nice to you, you tend to be nice to them, so I’m sure Sargon was in a virtuous circle.
Also, it seems like most English, Scottish, and Irish people are weak towards normie US cuisine in general, and especially against Southern and Texas cuisine. It’s like our cooking is the missing piece of their cooking, and they’re not prepared because it looks and sounds like it’s going to taste weird. And then it doesn’t, and they comprehend the dishes, and they are delighted.
So I’m sure Sargon was basically wandering around WV and TX, food-bombed and love-bombed, just like a lot of other UK YTubers and personalities.
Go Miss Piggy! I’m not messing with that dog…. Actually prior to about 1630 the anime hairstyles are closer to what samurai wore, and ronin in any era might wear ’em. “Pro tractor”. Groan….. I want colorful cars again! I don’t want to lose cars in a parking lot!
If you (male) were going to court or eating at your parents’ house, that was one thing. But there were a lot of situations where you could just wear a hair-covering hat for that; and in war, you just tied up your hair and had a helmet on.
Re: funky anime colors, it’s amazing what the nobility and samurai wore during the brief crazy flowering of the Azuchi-Momoyama period. Literally looks like metalheads and motorcycle gangs mixed with a Miami Vice episode. Flames? Lightning? Looking like a bumblebee? Totally normal for the period!
And some samurai wore European-style ruffs on top of their kimonos, too.
OTOH, it was recently brought to my attention that one of the famous O’Neills (Sir Neil O’Neill) was painted alongside his Irish wolfhound and his cuirass of Japanese “modern armor.” His neighbors also owned some nice Japanese armor, probably because so much of the family spent time in Spain and Portugal.
That’s one of the reasons I have a Mountain Dew Green Hyundai. Technically, it’s called “Electrolyte”, but whatever, the color makes me happy, and I can usually find it in a parking lot.
My husband hates the color too. He really preferred the lovely bronze that the Santa Fe was available in at the time (2013). I agreed with him, but pointed out that a) we couldn’t afford the Santa Fe, and b) I was the one who was going to be the primary driver the the Accent so c) shouldn’t it be a color that I liked and could find in the parking lot? He reluctantly agreed, but has never once in the 12 years since driven the thing.
We kind of liked the bronze color too. Really liked the Lava Orange Santa Fe but couldn’t get one in the PNW in 2019. Thus my choice (I’m driving it) of Rain Forest Green. Got the Lava Orange Santa Fe in 2020, which he drives.
We have a Rainforest Green Hyundai, and a Lava Orange Hyundai.
The second is a lot easier to find. Stands out on it’s own, especially if parked near red cars. It is not red, even though it looks like a sunset red-orange if not parked next to a red car.
The first blends in with the darker gray and black colors. But interestingly enough, not with the greens.
I wanted a “dirt brown” pickup. They had that color available. They tried to sell me black (NO!) or tomato-aspic orange (also no). It took a lot of shenanigans, but I have a dirt-colored pickup, which oddly enough, stands out compared to “work truck white” “city truck black” and “glittery blue.” And “faded farm truck red, don’t ask what the brown ‘dirt’ is.”
I owned a black vehicle at one point. It looked really sharp – when clean. But it showed every ounce of dust or dirt, and took a ton of work to keep clean. Never again.
Regarding the Gurgle study… did they really have to do a study to figure that one out?
Regarding the RLF shenanigans:
Neighborcat ate a yellow squirrel once. Well, he ate bits of it. Left the head and the tail, mostly. Looked rather disgusted afterwards. Probably a mutant squirrel or something. I don’t think allowing the RLF screen time will end well…
Kat-the-dog was doing the north fence inspection a few days ago. Had to untangle a couple strands of barbed wire where a deer didn’t make a clean jump (the river is 100 yards north of us, and coyotes/cougars tend to stay away from the few houses by us).
The odd one was the remnants of a squirrel draped over the barbed wire. I think it had been dropped off by a hawk or eagle. Kat was really annoyed when I threw the leftovers outside the fence.
Pretty sure those cement bags weigh 80 or 90 pounds each. That’s about 2/3 the weight of an average sized, healthy, in-shape woman. An average sized man weighs 40 pounds more and is twice as strong.
I’ve carried 90 pound cement bags around. It ain’t fun. I don’t want to think about doing it with half the strength I’m used to.
And no, being fat won’t make them easier to carry.
I mean, I’m a slightly chubby, fairly strong woman, and I can only easily manage ~50 lbs. I wouldn’t want to do it all day, either. My brother worked in a machine shop one summer, and he was regularly lifting well over 300 lbs multiple times per day, for 12-hour shifts. I have great respect for men’s upper body strength!
No way could I now at age 68, and out of shape. I used to pickup and carry, not far, but I could carry her, my 65# German Shepard. She was half my weight.
Also guess what happens when you, at 5’4″ and 130#’s, puts a 110# malamute on the end of a long line. When she stubbornly runs at something (trying to stop the intense pulling) so you turn and run 180 degrees away? Did you guess both you and the dog go down? You’d be correct. Only did that once. OTOH she quit pulling when she knew I was holding the leash. Still didn’t take her for walks outside the fenced yard. Couldn’t risk her going after something. But we could walk the yard perimeter. Or I could actually go put her on the leash and bring her into the garage.
When I worked for the forest service, I carried smaller loads unloading, but made more trips and didn’t stop for breaks.
Correct being overweight does not mean I should be able to lift half my weight, even if I was in shape enough to consider trying. I doubt I can even push half my weight.
I’ve seen cement bags (not concrete; Portland cement) running up to 100 pounds each. OTOH, from the picture, each stack is on a palette, so getting them off a truck should entail the help of a robust forklift. After that, good luck.
Home Desperate carries concrete in 80 and 60 pound bags, with the no-mix insta-set ones running 50 pounds each. I still have to figure out what got clobbered when the dog kennel tried to collapse this winter, but if the shallow-ish footings got broken, I might be able to redo them. Insta-set sounds wonderful. (After I turned 70, the 80 pound bags just seemed to weigh more than they did 10-20 years before. Funny that.)
Stacking cement bags on a palette would probably break the artist’s arm. :-P
There needs to be a whole series of memes like that hoard/horde one we had here a few months ago. Palette/pallet, rain/rein/reign, lose/loose and so on.
I discovered back when I was a teenager that I could carry those heavy cement bags (though I think those were 50-60 pound ones) IF someone set them on my shoulders. I’d hate to have to move those now, with my potential for getting injured, but given sufficient time, I probably could. Cost-effectiveness would be really bad, though.
Much easier than moving the bags that had gotten rained on, and which we had to move hardened. They didn’t even do the smart thing with the remains, which would have been, essentially, a retaining wall/walkway. They just discarded them.
According To Hoyt 
SFBS! Also, FIRST!
LikeLike
The fortune teller one reminds me of Matthew Bracken’s second novel in the “Enemies Trilogy”: “Domestic enemies: the Reconquista”.
LikeLike
If I had 10 pieces of bacon and you took 4, what would you have? A stump.
And now I want tamales filled with bacon.
LikeLike
Tamales filled with Bacon. Hmmmmm Sounds good.
Star Trek & Scotty … 100% can see this happening. Scotty, Jordie, and Belanna, or any other ST series engineer.
LikeLiked by 1 person
That’s pretty close to how they built the Enterprise-D for season three of Picard. When asked, IIRC Geordie admitted it was a mix of spare parts, and a Galaxy-class that was supposed to have been decommissioned.
(in-story, it was for a Federation-sanctioned “famous ships” event)
LikeLike
Open carrie, unstable ladder, and disable the AI function FTW
LikeLiked by 1 person
Carrie Fisher, smokin’ hottie, strong actor, and one of the finest script doctors around to Hollywood’s finest.
LikeLike
I saw a Tesla with a “F**** Musk” sign in the back window. My first thought, “Protective camouflage.”
LikeLiked by 1 person
I have seen but a single “Don’t key me, bro! I bought it before!” sticker on a Tesla out here, out of the innumerable hordes seen on the roads daily.
Maybe his Mom made him put it on.
LikeLike
Merely owning a Tesla should be considered penance enough.
LikeLike
I LOVE THE DRAGON MEME. 🐲🐲🐲🐲🐲🐲🐲🐲
LikeLike
I believe in dragons.
LikeLike
Hey, I won the trifecta by getting three memes published! I’m sure my reward is on the way….
https://accordingtohoyt.com/perma-open-post-for-interesting-links/#comment-894584
LikeLiked by 1 person
3 Phases of Cat: “Eating plastic? Why? I need to repurpose it for the injection mold.” — Indiana Hoyt…..
You’re right, Elon, at least Magneto didn’t turn to the guards and ask for a uniform in exchange for loading the oven….. 🤬🤬🤬
The far Left is angry… and so is the far right, for similar reasons.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Soros tried to join the National Socialist German Workers Party, but found out the hard way— even they had standards.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Magneto and his family probably got betrayed by somebody like Soros, or his capo buddies.
Yeah, in the real Marvel Universe, I’m pretty sure that Soros would have suffered some kind of metal-based accident about fifty years ago.
LikeLiked by 1 person
“Cause of death?”
“Iron overdose.”
“???”
“Skewered by a dozen pieces of rebar.”
LikeLiked by 1 person
Some people have played with the idea that young Magneto was rescued from the camps by Captain America.
In this alternate Marvel universe, by the time he developed his powers, he had the example of Cap to help him become a force for good.
LikeLike
There’s a What-If where he is thus rescued, and the comic assures us he never became a villain. Then the next comic was a sequel and pulled an diabolus ex machina to make him a villain. That was cheating.
LikeLike
LikeLike
Let’s try this again.
LikeLike
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/805511083368458832/
LikeLike
There’s one.
LikeLike
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/AdL1WWOY7HCawmx-FbLK1cVrC7vRlC7J2IlkJOHxwz7H-m7-Lafx5L8/
LikeLike
There’s another. Read it before you read this, which is my take on what happens after.
Cap and Bucky and the Commandos take Erik with them, his powers are very erratic and limited to making things explode and pushing metal away because torture does not teach him refined details; also, he has real difficulty using them less than full blast, and he passes out, often, after. They have to carry him a lot.
Cap and the Commandos wonder about why the weapon was a boy. Worm Erik’s story out of him the first night. After Erik tells how Schmidt murders his mother, and bursts into tears, Cap tries to console him by telling him of how Dr. Erskine was murdered, and he tries to fight his murderers.
They are chased by Dr. Klaus Schmidt, everyone who owes him a favor, everyone who wants him to owe a favor, everyone who wants to appropriate Erik as useful, and everyone who thinks a Jewish boy is too much of an embarrassment.
When Zola tries to capture him while they are on a train, Bucky falls, Erik uses metal to pull him back up (after exploding Zola’s gun in his face), and passes out, cold, for 50 hours. (Literally cold at first — clammy to the touches, shallow breathing, thready pulse.)
He recovers, is gleeful but weak as a kitten, and the Commandos are torn between strangling him and encouraging him.
It is a big break through on his powers — but Bucky had barely left the bedside during those 50 hours because he didn’t want to die but really didn’t want a boy to die in his place. He masters more refinements, including less than full strength, and never passes out again, but spends a lot more time being carried by the Commandos (six mother hens with but one chick, he grumbles). They do various tasks to help various Resistance groups in return for their help. Erik names himself Magneto to the Resistance. (Cap doesn’t entirely approve, he thought Erik was thinking of himself as a weapon).
When they are about to disembark for England, Schmidt catches up, literally on the docks. Erik deduces he’s a mutant and stops their shooting at him. Schmidt tries to lure him over, telling him he’s proud of him and that he had to kill his mother because she held him back, making Erik so furious he has a hard time controlling his powers again, so Cap and Bucky each take a hand to soothe him, and Erik shoots the coin down Schmidt’s throat and chokes him to death. Gabe sings a lullaby alongside to help him keep his calm.
Back in England, it is broadly intimidated that they should pack the weapon off to the lab for study by avoiding public attention. So Cap introduces him to the public with the biggest publicity he can — fortunately, there’s an unexploded bomb in a public place that Erik can handle nicely. They told Erik that it was publicity reasons to pump him up, but the generals in question betray the truth not so much by what they say as by their fury. Cap looks innocent, Bucky glowers, the other Commandos laugh behind their hands — Erik looks from face to face and is very quiet.
They try to cope. (There is some reason why Erik doesn’t just hop over and start working his way down the Nazi hierarchy from Hitler with permanent consequences. Probably magic.) Erik wants the radio to broadcast why Jews and others should not get on the trains. He gets put off with talk about WWI atrocity propaganda, and lack of evidence. Then he wants evidence. They put him off with talk about strategy and supplies.
Meanwhile, Bucky arranged to adopt Erik as his ward — he still felt guilty about the 50 hours — Cap helped, and even arranged to be his guardian if anything happened. Cap might be a little jealous of the way Erik took over the role as “person whose welfare Bucky worries about,” but then, he worries about Erik, too.
One day, someone walks into the room where he’s supposed to be studying school work, and find a picture book of the Little Red Hen open to the page, “I’ll do it myself!” said the Little Red Hen.
Suddenly supplies are less important. The Invaders and Commandos are sent to bring him back. Captain America explains that they must bring him back as efficiently as possible — that may mean doing what he’s trying to do, as faster than fighting. (They also find he brought some reporters with him, promising them the scoop of the war.)
Then they arrive in Auschwitz, and they would have sworn it was more efficient to help than fight if they had found Erik unconscious. They are too shocked to talk about it. They didn’t even arrive at a camp after it had stopped operating.
They find him busily trying to direct things, and the reporters trying to document. They help. They pack off the able-bodied adults to the Resistance with the guns. (The guards and the rest were either killed fighting or were shot and killed by their former prisoners — while trying to escape.) And the rest are carried off in large metal boxes to England. (This includes a Jewish woman named Rose. She helped organize the evacavees.)
Back in England, Erik and others talk about the other camps, and the Allies organize a Great Liberation Raid that hits the major death camps, with more reporters to document. Hits all the major camps in rapid succession because Erik warns they will kill prisoners if it’s known.
The rescued dub Erik the Liberator, and much propaganda is made.
In the displaced persons camp, one day when Erik was visiting, a beautiful girl named Magda claim to know Erik, got a lot of grief about it, and Erik recognized her and was delighted she was alive. Rose, who was doing a lot of the organizing stuff, realized that she would get even more grief and adopted her as her ward. Bucky and Rose see a lot of each other because of their wards.
The Allies manage to divert Erik to mostly sabotaging German factories far behind lines, so he faces fewer guns. (Cap and the Commandos really approve of that) Nazis attempt to ambush him, but the first attempts try to lure him to places on the pretext there’s a factory there, and don’t realize that the metal difference is vivid to him. He’s careful after that.
Peggy Carter had squired Erik around England so he could learn more about factories and how to damage them without giving away his plans by flying about England, and she dated Cap.
He also lifts supplies to the Resistance fighters.
Every now and again he raids an atrocity site. Particularly when he’s alerted to one by one James “Lucky Jim” Howletts. He likes him because he can contact the Resistance and pack off the able-bodied. Captain America does not approve. Then he is caught between Erik’s overenthusiastic grabbing at this way to atone and worry that he set him on the path with the talk of Dr. Erskine, and the knowledge that he didn’t know what else he could have said that would have had even that much benefit. So he joins Bucky in the role of person who worries.
The Nazis put in all out efforts to make new supers.
he Nazis made it to Himalayas using some arcane form of transport. When other people arrived at the city of the Inhumans, they found no bones; the Inhumans had taken off with it.
They try experiments on Slavonic untermenschen — and Erik raids and frees them. There are seven, they take the name The Forest Knights, and they individually adopt names like Firebird, Sunna, Marya Morvena, etc.
There is a Slavonic revolt basically where Nazi Germany wanted an Eastern Wall against the USSR
When asked at a press conference about Liberator’s part, they say, “What is Liberator? 12. We are fighting without him.”
Actually Lucky Jim clued him in that it would be a good time to sabotage factories in France so he went a little wild, but that’s all.
War ends a lot earlier.
With the war over, Rose and Bucky marry. They work at helping displaced children.
Steve and Peggy married, Steve talks to Howard Stark about a possibly scholarship, and Erik goes to college and gets a doctorate before he turns 20, and then he marries Magda.
His doctoral thesis is reinvented the superserum — his powers let him analyze the Vitarays.
He meets Professor X while Charles is still a child, and they study mutants. There is much to-do about how dangerous the serum would be to mutants, so there is much to ensure mutants are properly diagnosed.
Some people observe the serum may become the remedial treatment for people not born mutants. They discover ways to make it give new powers.
Rose and Bucky learned law about helping children. Erik turns to them whenever there’s a mutant child who needs legal help. Or otherwise superpowered.)
Cap married Peggy, they had a son James Joseph “Jamie” Rodgers. He married Wanda. They had seven children.
Erik offered the Moon’s Blue Area to the Hulk, where he lives happily and does a TV show called “Professor Hulk Explains the Universe.”
I’m not sure about the Widow. Indeed, I think after Eastern Europe revolted under the aegis of the Eastern European supers, Stalin fell down a flight of stairs one day. Suspicion fell on a superheroine called Vila, but nothing was proven — even though it was clear that all the other Allied superheroes had been set up with alibis so suspicion didn’t fall on them. Could there have been a Red Room with a much weaker USSR?
I imagined for a moment someone proposing the Accords in my universe where Cap and the Commandos rescued Erik from the Nazis, and my conclusion was that the instant response is “Who gets to tell Erik?” followed by dropping the matter.
LikeLike
In re: the child designing a parachute meme…
QA is what little brothers are for.
(He says, on his big sister’s blog.)
LikeLiked by 1 person
A little brother is a white mouse that will help you set up the experiment.
LikeLike
I object to Fredric Brown. I am not a bug-eyed monster. I just happen to wear glasses.
LikeLiked by 2 people
me too, Mike, me too.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Why Sarah, I didn’t know you were into chasing almost naked women too. Or do you now have granddaughters who don’t like to take baths now? /wink
LikeLike
I don’t have grandchildren. :)
BUT the mirror isn’t kind to me.
LikeLike
I am a bug-eyed monster, and I want as many scantily clad babes as I can lay tentacles on.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Not a BEM. I’d be happy with just one in a nice dress to read books beside. That also just happens to be tolerant of pew pew, memes, and serial killer cats.
LikeLiked by 1 person
How true about Miss Piggy.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Right?
LikeLiked by 1 person
Also I put in a too long comment and it got moderated. I shall be wiser henceforth, but it needs rescue.
LikeLike
A quick note that Rod Blagojevich is, in fact, not in prison for trying to sell Obama’s Senate seat. He was, but Trump pardoned him during Trump’s first term. From what I understand, the explanation given for the pardon was that Blagojevich’s prison term was excessively long when compared with the sentences often handed down for more serious crimes.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Sargon of Akkad reflects on his recent trip to the US, and how it reflects well on the US, and poorly on the UK.
LikeLike
Must be why social media has been flooded with Europe Is Better opinion pieces disguised as news stories. Just yesterday on Instagram was greeted with a “Finland has been scientifically ranked as the happiest country on Earth with America fallen to eleventy hundredth place” (Source: Trust me, bro.) Followed by a slew of “Look at this poor photogenic person who died because greedy capitalists raised the price of his insulin/asthma/whatever meds! He’d still be alive if he lived in a country with Universal Healthcare (yeah him and Alfie Evans) rounded off with a even “Kindergardeners in France eat gourmet meals” (bunch of French people in the comments calling bullshit on that one.)
LikeLiked by 1 person
Finland, or what I saw of it, is a lovely country in summer, and great for winter recreation like cross-country skiing in winter, but I’m not sure “happiest country” fits into that. The people were polite, but not as cheerful as, oh, Poles or Lithuanians. YMMV.
LikeLike
”Finland has a unique alcohol culture characterized by high consumption rates, with 8.7 liters of pure alcohol consumed per person in 2023.”
LikeLike
Finland may have been picked because it’s Scandinavian. And “The Scandinavians are making socialism work, dontcha know!?”
LikeLiked by 1 person
Sargon gives an inadvertent reflection on how bad some parts of the UK must be, when he says that West Virginia reminds him of “a well-tended garden.”
I mean, I like WV too, and the people are great, and the farms and parks are nice, but holy crud.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Good LORD. WV, or the rusty parts of Ohio are paradise in comparison with Portugal (at least the parts not groomed for tourists.)
LikeLike
Yeah, I had a bit of ‘huh’ to that.
There are literal books on all the ghost towns in some parts of the US.
Now, obviously it must be an apples and oranges situation, with a mental filter that he does not explicitly describe where he is talking about buildings in active use, that people are living in.
I had some other reactions like that. One, his view of polite. (I am probably fairly rude, and poorly socialized, all factors considered.)
I figure that the other people in the UK may work hard, and the issue might be that the lunatics there are more equipped to just take away everything that someone worked for. And have been wrecking more of the wealth that people produce there.
I think my main takeaway is that Americans feel we have more remedy for disputes, and that covid was bad for the mental health of Americans and of UK folk. But, you would expect that, because those are my priors, and I can be pretty careless about just accepting that my priors aren’t falsified by new information.
It is interesting and a little healing to get another view of relative matters.
LikeLike
So, after going back to Portugal after being in the US as an exchange student I found Portuguese scarily rude, even compared to the last place I’d stopped: NYC.
In fact they were ruder than the person in Portugal I KNEW to be the most polite of our circle.
I’m serious.
He’s right one this. And both Portugal and the UK have got exponentially worse the last 40 years.
LikeLike
I’m sure it helps that WV people have a decent view of English people. The entire group of English accents acts like a +1 to charisma, upon most people in the US who have no reason to think otherwise.
And of course, once people are nice to you, you tend to be nice to them, so I’m sure Sargon was in a virtuous circle.
LikeLike
Also, it seems like most English, Scottish, and Irish people are weak towards normie US cuisine in general, and especially against Southern and Texas cuisine. It’s like our cooking is the missing piece of their cooking, and they’re not prepared because it looks and sounds like it’s going to taste weird. And then it doesn’t, and they comprehend the dishes, and they are delighted.
So I’m sure Sargon was basically wandering around WV and TX, food-bombed and love-bombed, just like a lot of other UK YTubers and personalities.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Go Miss Piggy!
I’m not messing with that dog….
Actually prior to about 1630 the anime hairstyles are closer to what samurai wore, and ronin in any era might wear ’em.
“Pro tractor”. Groan…..
I want colorful cars again! I don’t want to lose cars in a parking lot!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Oh, you samurai’d my comment!
If you (male) were going to court or eating at your parents’ house, that was one thing. But there were a lot of situations where you could just wear a hair-covering hat for that; and in war, you just tied up your hair and had a helmet on.
Re: funky anime colors, it’s amazing what the nobility and samurai wore during the brief crazy flowering of the Azuchi-Momoyama period. Literally looks like metalheads and motorcycle gangs mixed with a Miami Vice episode. Flames? Lightning? Looking like a bumblebee? Totally normal for the period!
And some samurai wore European-style ruffs on top of their kimonos, too.
OTOH, it was recently brought to my attention that one of the famous O’Neills (Sir Neil O’Neill) was painted alongside his Irish wolfhound and his cuirass of Japanese “modern armor.” His neighbors also owned some nice Japanese armor, probably because so much of the family spent time in Spain and Portugal.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir_Neil_O%27Neill,_2nd_Baronet
There’s a YT channel called Medieval Irish History. The guy is very knowledgeable, very Irish, and lives in Australia, IIRC.
LikeLiked by 1 person
*Wry G* I had to find out what samurai in 1618 would look like, and the hair thing is real!
Cool, will check out the channel!
LikeLike
Yeah, I love the wild hair almost as much as the wild colored coats.
LikeLiked by 1 person
That’s one of the reasons I have a Mountain Dew Green Hyundai. Technically, it’s called “Electrolyte”, but whatever, the color makes me happy, and I can usually find it in a parking lot.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Better thee than me. (I dislike the bright shades of green.) Our Soul is bright RED, which also stands out in a parking lot.
LikeLiked by 1 person
My husband hates the color too. He really preferred the lovely bronze that the Santa Fe was available in at the time (2013). I agreed with him, but pointed out that a) we couldn’t afford the Santa Fe, and b) I was the one who was going to be the primary driver the the Accent so c) shouldn’t it be a color that I liked and could find in the parking lot? He reluctantly agreed, but has never once in the 12 years since driven the thing.
LikeLike
We kind of liked the bronze color too. Really liked the Lava Orange Santa Fe but couldn’t get one in the PNW in 2019. Thus my choice (I’m driving it) of Rain Forest Green. Got the Lava Orange Santa Fe in 2020, which he drives.
Yes, two Santa Fe’s.
LikeLiked by 1 person
We have a Rainforest Green Hyundai, and a Lava Orange Hyundai.
The second is a lot easier to find. Stands out on it’s own, especially if parked near red cars. It is not red, even though it looks like a sunset red-orange if not parked next to a red car.
The first blends in with the darker gray and black colors. But interestingly enough, not with the greens.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I wanted a “dirt brown” pickup. They had that color available. They tried to sell me black (NO!) or tomato-aspic orange (also no). It took a lot of shenanigans, but I have a dirt-colored pickup, which oddly enough, stands out compared to “work truck white” “city truck black” and “glittery blue.” And “faded farm truck red, don’t ask what the brown ‘dirt’ is.”
LikeLiked by 1 person
I owned a black vehicle at one point. It looked really sharp – when clean. But it showed every ounce of dust or dirt, and took a ton of work to keep clean. Never again.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Regarding the fortune teller:
That guy’s getting one heck of a tip.
Regarding the Gurgle study… did they really have to do a study to figure that one out?
Regarding the RLF shenanigans:
Neighborcat ate a yellow squirrel once. Well, he ate bits of it. Left the head and the tail, mostly. Looked rather disgusted afterwards. Probably a mutant squirrel or something. I don’t think allowing the RLF screen time will end well…
LikeLiked by 1 person
Kat-the-dog was doing the north fence inspection a few days ago. Had to untangle a couple strands of barbed wire where a deer didn’t make a clean jump (the river is 100 yards north of us, and coyotes/cougars tend to stay away from the few houses by us).
The odd one was the remnants of a squirrel draped over the barbed wire. I think it had been dropped off by a hawk or eagle. Kat was really annoyed when I threw the leftovers outside the fence.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Pretty sure those cement bags weigh 80 or 90 pounds each. That’s about 2/3 the weight of an average sized, healthy, in-shape woman. An average sized man weighs 40 pounds more and is twice as strong.
I’ve carried 90 pound cement bags around. It ain’t fun. I don’t want to think about doing it with half the strength I’m used to.
And no, being fat won’t make them easier to carry.
LikeLike
I mean, I’m a slightly chubby, fairly strong woman, and I can only easily manage ~50 lbs. I wouldn’t want to do it all day, either. My brother worked in a machine shop one summer, and he was regularly lifting well over 300 lbs multiple times per day, for 12-hour shifts. I have great respect for men’s upper body strength!
LikeLiked by 1 person
No way could I now at age 68, and out of shape. I used to pickup and carry, not far, but I could carry her, my 65# German Shepard. She was half my weight.
Also guess what happens when you, at 5’4″ and 130#’s, puts a 110# malamute on the end of a long line. When she stubbornly runs at something (trying to stop the intense pulling) so you turn and run 180 degrees away? Did you guess both you and the dog go down? You’d be correct. Only did that once. OTOH she quit pulling when she knew I was holding the leash. Still didn’t take her for walks outside the fenced yard. Couldn’t risk her going after something. But we could walk the yard perimeter. Or I could actually go put her on the leash and bring her into the garage.
When I worked for the forest service, I carried smaller loads unloading, but made more trips and didn’t stop for breaks.
Correct being overweight does not mean I should be able to lift half my weight, even if I was in shape enough to consider trying. I doubt I can even push half my weight.
LikeLike
I’ve seen cement bags (not concrete; Portland cement) running up to 100 pounds each. OTOH, from the picture, each stack is on a palette, so getting them off a truck should entail the help of a robust forklift. After that, good luck.
Home Desperate carries concrete in 80 and 60 pound bags, with the no-mix insta-set ones running 50 pounds each. I still have to figure out what got clobbered when the dog kennel tried to collapse this winter, but if the shallow-ish footings got broken, I might be able to redo them. Insta-set sounds wonderful. (After I turned 70, the 80 pound bags just seemed to weigh more than they did 10-20 years before. Funny that.)
LikeLiked by 1 person
Straight cement comes in 94lb.
LikeLike
Stacking cement bags on a palette would probably break the artist’s arm. :-P
There needs to be a whole series of memes like that hoard/horde one we had here a few months ago. Palette/pallet, rain/rein/reign, lose/loose and so on.
LikeLike
Visualizes an artist’s studio with a palette jack. (Very small jack, that. )
Rein/reign triggers tooth-gnashing, but I was pre-caffeinated (posttimes are EDT, I’m PDT) and once it got past spellcheck, I went onward.
The reign in Spain falls mainly on the plain, but the elites don’t notice. :)
LikeLiked by 1 person
“Rein/reign triggers tooth-gnashing, but I was pre-caffeinated (posttimes are EDT, I’m PDT) and once it got past spellcheck, I went onward.”
I am going to steal this excuse!
LikeLiked by 1 person
I discovered back when I was a teenager that I could carry those heavy cement bags (though I think those were 50-60 pound ones) IF someone set them on my shoulders. I’d hate to have to move those now, with my potential for getting injured, but given sufficient time, I probably could. Cost-effectiveness would be really bad, though.
Much easier than moving the bags that had gotten rained on, and which we had to move hardened. They didn’t even do the smart thing with the remains, which would have been, essentially, a retaining wall/walkway. They just discarded them.
LikeLike
The Bernie Sanders comparison is unfair to Statler and Waldorf, I think.
LikeLike
OT, but we’re under a tornado warning right now. Prayers appreciated. (Not too worried, but it’s going to get interesting here soon).
LikeLiked by 1 person
Followup….no damage, though something went by.
LikeLiked by 1 person
That motivational poster speaks to me.
LikeLike
https://substack.com/redirect/57740bb8-429c-4b09-be30-979db3f7f844?j=eyJ1IjoiNmVtMW8ifQ.o6GuQION56RV5zdh9AbFPKt8wsc6MPcyO8y9Lu-rz9w
LikeLike
Interesting, WPDE sent me an e-mail for the meme link I posted but the comment doesn’t show here.
“Blast your code, thou unshriven whoresons. May piles afflict thee and fire ants smite thee.”
Arthur Saldovado is almost always appropriate when dealing with software.
LikeLiked by 1 person
If it’s the substack Dr. Malone one, I see it.
LikeLike
And, yes, RIP Val Kilmer.
LikeLike
https://x.com/BillyM2k/status/1909082378057978216
LikeLike