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Wasn’t Tony manipulated by Wanda? His fears were amplified and he was given a strong push. A claim can be made that he wasn’t entirely of a right mind when he made Ultron. TomB

I prefer the idea that the serum amplifies what is already there. Walker was already fractured. The break was there just not expressed. The serum brought the break to the surface and amplified it. I imagine Walker was broken by His actions in his prior service. That he had counseling by the...

In regards to the current trial, that seems to be about casual brutalilty; an indifference to suffering and harm. Walker’s rage seems to be an entirely different creature. If I were deploying assets I would give Walker a hard pass unless the situation was truly desperate. Uncontrollable...

Was the breakdown due to the serum? The serum may have helped to push him over the edge, but he seemed to be about to break even without the serum. What the serum did was to keep him in the fight. The serum made the fall deeper. TomB

Well, it looked like killing was entirely unnecessary. The guy was down and out when new cap killed him. It seemed that the killing served New cap’s rage. Would the killing be justified if the guy had surrendered and had ceased to offer resistance? TomB

The other matter is that Isaiah should be between 90 and 110 years old in 2020. That is, if he were between 20 to 40 in 1950. Plus, he may have had rough treatment for decades. That would add years to his effective age. TomB

But, wasn't Bucky also in suspended animation ("on ice") for a long time, too? TomB

I had that response too. But I am thrown off by the "wanting to do the job" comment. There is a mercenary aspect to his behavior that bothers me. Also, "wanting to do the job" ... for whom? I'm feeling that "for whom" could be filled by a lot of different groups. Thanks! TomB

The next episode is up! Some interesting world-building in this episode. The threads of the story are multiplying ... A little uneven ... I find the transitions from serious to comedic banter to be a little jarring. Plenty of fodder for continuing the discussions re: discrimination in...

Note that a thing can (theoretically) accelerate forever tending to a finite velocity. As long as the amount of acceleration decreases over time. A point falling towards the event horizon of a black hole, once it gets close enough, to a distant observer, actually appears to decelerate forever...

Well, what is the state of the universe at a particular time? Is it based on our awareness of an event based on when a signal from that event reaches us? Or do we consider that time has elapsed since the event created the signal that we perceived? The sense that there is a universal “now”...

well, math isn’t evidence. Math is how we organize evidence and create a tractable model for how things work. For black holes, my understanding is that it’s our past experience that guides us. Past experience says that physics doesn’t stop applying in places we can’t see. Then we don’t...

Ah. I'm wondering how many people who returned from the blip had no financial assets. Would all of the disappeared been treated as having died, and their assets distributed? And, is the implication that the ship was just sitting there for five years, unmaintained, because of the blip? That...

Well sure. What can be said about the interior of a black hole is arguably philosophy, not physics. One simple alternative view of black holes is that they have no interior. No currently conceivable experiment can measure anything about the interior. The point is important for anyone wanting...

Sure, but this is important to understanding how things work inside a black hole. There are a lot of misconceptions that are cleared up knowing that all movement within a black hole at less than or equal to the speed of light points to the center of the black hole. Thanks, TomB

That's true for light originating at the event horizon. Light originating within the event horizon follows a path that reaches the singularity at the center of the black hole. Any direction in which light can be emitted within a black hole points towards the singularity. Thanks! TomB

Unwinnable fights can cut against game expectations. If the pcs are hired to rescue a family that was taken by goblins, and they discover, deep in the goblin cave, a powerful goblin shaman well above their power level, a lot of players would give the fight their best shot. Their fantasy is to...

One thing is to make sure that the players have tools for evaluating the difficulty of an encounter. And, that they have options other than a fight. And that moving forward the story or campaign doesn't require fighting a particular enemy. This can be hindered by an "open door, roll...

It seemed to me that Falcon was brushing aside the differences. To him, both Wizards and Sorcerers are both just folks who use magic, with minor differences in presentation. Bucky was having a nerd moment and Falcon was saying, ”Dude, I don’t care”. TomB

Uh, I don’t think that I relieved any of the supers of moral or ethical responsibility. To add a mitigating statement for Wanda, she was attempting and failing to handle her grief, and her actions were more or less a psychological breakdown, with additional consequences due to her psychic...