Owain Reese

by on June 15, 2017 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Art, Character Profiles

Thunderbirds cannot speak our languages, and we cannot speak theirs. We can understand each other given practice, or use translator programs if we lack it, but those options do not fill one serious hole in our communications. Names. The inability for us to say their names or for them to say ours requires a dual naming system so we can know who we are referring to when we speak. Owain Reese chose his name after careful study of our culture, when word reached them that we were assembling the fleets at Sunnydale. Owain was a veteran starfighter pilot when The War began, and was part of the actions that repulsed the Shang advance into Thunderbird space. Owain volunteered to join the force coming to Sunnydale, and then volunteered once more to join my Cowboys after they arrived. He is a prime example of what they can bring to the table when we need them.

High rez version available for free on Patreon

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Morgan Reese

by on June 14, 2017 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Art, Character Profiles

Morgan died over a thousand years ago on the Thunderbird’s home planet. She left her flesh and blood body behind to become one with the networks and gain immortality. She spent the first millennia of her second life traveling throughout Thunderbird space at lightspeed, and taking part in the exploration of new star systems via their far-flung network of probe swarms. Then we made Contact. Then the Shang attacked. Morgan volunteered to fight as the mind of a starfighter in defense of her people. And when word arrived in Thunderbird space that we were building a fleet at Sunnydale to take The War to the Chinese and their Shang allies, she joined the Thunderbird contribution to the effort. That was where I first met her.

High rez version available for free on Patreon

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A Primer on the Races of Humanity – Branan

by on June 13, 2017 at 12:01 am
Posted In: The Races of Humanity

The Albion were serious little gengineers in their day, and we can see their results all over human space. Some of their experiments worked as planned. Some did not. The Branan of Betelgeuse fell into the second group. They are technically uplifted birds, though they were modified to have a bipedal humanlike structure, stance, and size. And their minds were largely upgraded to a human-standard structure, though enough of the old birdbrain remains to make them feel more alien than other humans. They move quickly and spastically, and do not like to remain still. They are also quick to avoid physical confrontations with other humans due to the light and fragile bones they inherited from their ancestors. The most common word associated with them is “squirrelly,” even though they have no genetic relation. But that is what people think when they see a Branan looking around for any threat while spastically moving from one spot to the next.

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Healthcare

by on June 12, 2017 at 2:45 am
Posted In: Diaries

So some of you know that I used to have healthcare. I did what you are supposed to do. I went to college, I got a degree, and I got a job using that degree. Then the computer industry in my hometown hit the magic threshold of too many and everybody started laying people off. Me included. I found another job, a good job, that provided me with decent healthcare insurance. It got too expensive for my employer to support though, so they got out of the middleman position and simply gave me a raise that would give me the money it took to pay for a new plan. I looked at dozens of plans from several providers until I picked the one I liked and would work for me. It was 100 bucks a month.

Then our benevolent government decided the plan I had wasn’t good enough and Obamacare was born. I lost that insurance, and couldn’t afford the 300+ dollar insurance the government-mandated insurance costed. So I did without, until last year when my appendix exploded on me. I tried to get insurance after that, but the government wouldn’t allow me to simply start getting insurance in the middle of the year. Heaven forbid someone want to do that. So I had to wait until this year to get it. And when I was finally allowed to do it, there was only one company left in my area, and they only had three plans. The 300+ plan with an insane deductible, a 700+ plan with a more rational deductible, and something north of a thousand dollars a month. For one healthy person.

I picked the 700+ option, and then went to my local clinic to check some things out. It seems I have some issues that need working on, with sleep apnea being one big one. So now I have a cpap machine. But I had to reach the 2,000+ dollar deductible before the insurance would kick in. And even after it kicks in, it still refuses to pay for a lot of stuff, and sluffs it off to me.

What’s the end result? I still owe over 5,000 dollars for the loan I took to pay for last year’s medical crap, and that was after thirty thousand dollars of charity from the Mayo Clinic to just write off most of the bill. And now another 4,000 dollars is being added to that this year that Obamacare won’t cover.

I’m closer to bankruptcy right now than I’ve been in twenty years. And back then, I did it to myself as a stupid college student who’d just learned the joys of credit cards with no limits. I recovered from that, I paid them off, and in the years since I bought multiple vehicles, and had clawed my up to the American dream by buying a house and a vacation house in lake country. I’m down to one vehicle, and I’ve sold my vacation house to keep up with the bills. And I still don’t have enough money to pay for Obamacare, or the bills it racks up on me.

So I’m forced now to go back to the Mayo Clinic again, hat in hand, and ask for charity once more. I shouldn’t have to do that. I should be able to pay my bills. But Obamacare makes that impossible. It is driving me to the edge of bankruptcy, and I hate that. The government shouldn’t be in the position of forcing its own citizens into bankruptcy to pay for programs that the government mandates we have.

But that is life under Obamacare. That is how it dehumanizes those of us caught under its thumb. And that is why Obamacare must end.

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A Primer on the Races of Humanity – Branan

by on June 11, 2017 at 12:01 am
Posted In: The Races of Humanity

I learned much on my trip to Betelgeuse. I made contacts and allies that would be useful in later years, and negotiated trade agreements that helped both our peoples. The Peloran were generous in their own way, but they needed nothing from us. They had no incentive to share one bit more than they wanted to. But the Branan needed the hyperdrive. They were far more advanced than us in most other ways, and they gave us a wealth of technological examples and theories that would have made Einstein cry from joy. Or weep in horror. The technologies I brought back changed our world. It is common knowledge that the Peloran gave us the stars. It is less common knowledge that the Thunderbirds gave us the capability to defend our stars. And when The War came upon us all, they fought with us.

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