So on Monday I sold an antique coal scuttle to a prop company in NY that's going to use it in a film and yesterday I sold a antique brass bed to The Juilliard School in NY.

eBay always does this to me, right when I'm already crazy busy.

At least these were 2 worthwhile sales. :bigtu:

how is it i always end up watching videos of: car dash cams, police checkpoints, police brutality and 2nd Amendment videos on youtube?

Pretty much everyone who crossed Mal in such a way that we know this won't be the end of it.

The former Mrs. Reynolds (after having allowed Jayne to spend some quality time with her.)

Patience, leader of Whitefall.

Badger the Well-Hatted Man.

Mr. Niska.

The un-named fella in "Out of Gas" who shot Mal and tried to commandeer his ship.

And others.


We know that's he's capable of it. At the end of Train Job, he casually kicks Mr. Niska's henchman Crow into the intake of the idling engine. That was the appropriate response to this situation (putting aside the potential for damaging / destroying the engine, of course.)

I just don't see why Mal, as an outlaw smuggler, continually finds himself bound by the Fairness in Heroics Act of 2497.

Youtube is owned by Google, so they know all about your pansy liberal search history.

:brain:



I don't know precisely what the root cause was, but I fixed it by doing something I should have done a week prior. I reverted back to an older MSQ file.

Immediately prior to the first occurrence of the problem, I had made some minor changes to both the spark map and the VE map. Something in there caused the FUBAR, and I intend to find out what, after I've gotten all of the fallout from upgrading to the current codebase sorted out.

like this stuff:

Know someone thinking about going to school, or going back? Talk to them about petrochemical engineering.

Mechanical engineering, design engineering, etc.

I do believe that several of those mentioned would have reappeared in following episodes (Niska in particular) to be dealt with then. The sudden cancelation was what skewed things.

I also believe it's because Mal is basically a decent guy. He doesn't kill if he doesn't have to. He has no qualms about killing when the situation warrants, but is not a cold blooded murderer.

You don't know me, son, so let me explain this to you once: If I ever kill you, you'll be awake. You'll be facing me, and you'll be armed.

Atherton Wing comes to mind as a deserving fellow, not for being an evil psychopath like Niska, but for being a bratty, selfish shithead.

Ah, but his punishment was worse than mere death. He is now shunned as a coward, has lost all access to "companions", and is the laughingstock of the whole crappy place.

That was kind of my take on Atherton. (I couldn't remember his name.)

He didn't really need killing, he just needed humiliating. And that's exactly what Mal did by sparing his life.


Contrast with Jubal Early, the sociopathic bounty hunter who boarded Serenity and attempted to kidnap River in his Boba-Fett-Esque little ship. That fella needed killing. Letting him float away into the black seemed a tad hollow- like some other ship was going to come along and rescue him after the credits rolled. That fella would have made a nice plinking target for Jayne once he was a km or two out.

One of the better anti-hero quotes in all of television.

Strangely, i'm excited to get my car out this Spring. Maybe it's the bunch of maintenance parts i just ordered.

joe. what. was. issue?

in b4 ban.

I have in the past, what are you trying to hide or get around?

See post # 16144.

One thing I find troubling...

Having at least temporarily resolved The Issue, I decided I should probably upgrade to the current stable code, which is 1.2.0a. (I have been running the pre-1.2 alpha 2 code until now.)

Having done so, and making no other changes at all, the quality of my idle has decreased. It now wants to droop, then overshoot and oscillate, whereas previously it was almost silly how utterly perfect it was.

It seems like every single thing I've done lately has caused my idle to break in some way...

I played with TOR a few years ago out of curiosity.

My impression was that it seemed to provide bandwidth similar to that of a 14.4 dial-up connection, with latency comparable to a multi-hop satellite connection.

Fun fact: TOR is principally funded by the US Government.

Fun fact #2: TOR is fairly insecure. There have been a number of successful attacks against it which have exposed the IP addresses of targeted users. In fact, by using TOR, you are probably making yourself a bigger target simply by participating in a network which, by its very nature, attracts suspicion and hackers.

Fun fact #3: You are also opening yourself up to criminal liability by acting as a TOR node, such as the case of William Weber who was busted last November and has been charged with distributing child pornography. Weber himself was not engaged in the act, however someone else was anonymously torrenting child porn through the TOR system, and some of it wound up exiting the network through one of Weber's computers.

Fun fact #4: Cleanfeed. (This scares me more than SOPA.)

Because he has a heart of gold. The mercy shown to those who don't deserve it is merely one aspect of this. Consider also his personal respect and attraction to a woman he openly calls a whore, or his concern and self-sacrifice for the whorehouse, or his loyalty to Simon and River (masked under flat claims that they are "part of [his] crew"). Clearly the writers intend to depict Mal as a man who projects a gruff exterior out of necessity, but who underneath it all is a big ol' softy.

Jayne, on the other hand, better fits the description of a true psychopathic career criminal -- consider his cavalier and apparently impulsive murder of the electric net operators at the end of Our Mrs. Reynolds.

Jayne's a complex character. I don't think he fits the definition of a psychopath, as he really has no tendencies at all for manipulativeness, superficial charm, egocentricity, etc. He's just a simple enforcer whose loyalty is to the highest bidder.

Mal, by comparison, tips the scale way too far in the opposite direction. There's a difference between not being a cold-blooded killer and being *way* too forgiving of those who have tried to murder you and steal your ship. Ain't no reason in the verse justifies that sort of forgiveness.

That kind detachment and emotional coldness, especially with regard to a violent career, isn't indicative of psychopathic tendencies?

But I'll grant that it's complex.

Consider the end of "Ariel". Jayne has betrayed Mal and when pressed (under threat of death) admits it to Mal. Jayne, assuming Mal will let him die, asks Mal not to tell the others of his betrayal -- an indication that he does have some emotional connection, or, at the very least, some measure of shame or embarrassment for his actions.

On the other hand, just moments after realizing that Mal does not intend to kill him, he rather glibly asks, "Can I come in?" as if all is back to normal.

I still think it's consistent with his character. Mal's rebellion against the Alliance stems from a desire to be left alone -- a feeling that the Alliance is too intrusive, too nosy. He is a man who just wants to go on his way, unperturbed.

Additionally, as he reveals with the "If I ever kill you, you'll be awake. You'll be facing me, and you'll be armed" line, he lives by some internal code. It doesn't always make sense to those around him, but it serves as a guard against becoming like those he despises -- the dishonorable (on both sides of the law).

So I can accept that he shows too much mercy to his enemies. He fears becoming what he hates most -- someone who has power over others and abuses it. When faced with anything other than an immediate life-or-death situation, he repeatedly chooses to show unwarranted mercy.



This could all be wrong, though. I'm just thinking.