First Mojo, now Kinky.

:(

With proper, consistent, non-extreme consequences to poor choices at home, children can usually extrapolate without the need for the application of “serious” punishments.

That whole “scared into good behaviour” thing is bullshit punishment escalation that’s typically only deemed “necessary” when the “discipline” situation at home is random, inequal, unjust, and therefore difficult to understand as a framework in life from the ages where such behavioural patterns are formed.

That’s not to say some people won’t continue to make poor choices anyway, but scarring children emotionally isn’t an appropriate “solution” to that.

One-on-one individualized attention coupled with understanding and empathy is the thing to start with there.

Okay, so what’s causing our costs to be higher?

Wow, it wasn’t that long ago when production was moved to the States because of Japan’s high labor costs.

I know Nissan US will likely try to BLAME it on things like unions or rising labor costs, but there’s NO WAY that amounts to a >20% rise in production costs even if you cite “hidden” costs behind the 6.6% or whatever they got. Keep in mind that costs were LOWER here and NOW they’re TWENTY PERCENT LOWER in japan. That means we rose a BUNCH more than where we were at because there’s no way they moved it here if we were 1% lower than japan.

Which part of the raw-materials-to-auto-parts chain is inflating the hell out of costs to declare record profits this time?

I’m working to overcome a particularly troublesome piece of technology right now and enjoying a cold, refreshing, Diet Dr. Pepper, so I guess the sentiment stands.

It’s interesting because I didn’t really like Janeway a ton until her first interaction with Q. Like, there was nothing outright bad about Mulgrew’s portrayal, I just wasn’t completely and totally sold on the character yet from a writing perspective.

Something about a captain interacting with an omnipotent being really seals something for me personally, because Sisko’s interaction with Q was what sold me on him right away, too.

I enjoyed Gibney as Benteen, so I’m sure it would have worked out, it just would have been…different.

EU was a sea of toxic filth with alarmingly small amount of competently written and good material in it, which once recognized as good had every other half rate writer trying to pin their next bad idea on it.

I remember running across a D6 dice rolling table for generating the plot of the next Kevin J. Anderson book when I was looking for West End Games SW tabletop supplemental (or fan-created) stuff on Geocities.

If the table had been juuuust a little more generic for things like “qualities possessed by big bad”, “motivations of antagonist”, “reason for melodramatic interlude”, and “type of mcguffin” it probably could have actually been used to generate future books.

Owing partially to LucasArts restrictions, a LOT of the EU was pretty derivative/formulaic but most of us didn’t care because it was MORE STAR WARS in an era that hadn’t seen any for 15+ years.

they find Luke’s hand and use it to make an evil clone of Luke that’s named… Luuke

And suddenly, completely unbidden, the name “Joruus C’Baoth” springs into my head.

A quick look at wookieepedia shows me that he’s the dude who created the clone.

I’m actually kinda shocked that I remember that from a single reading of the thrawn trilogy back in the 90’s.