It took just one meeting with Lutnick to reverse his strong stance and start saying:

Mr. Ford insisted Mr. Lutnick somehow wants to “boost up” Canada, despite Mr. Trump’s repeated threats of annexation and tariffs that could cripple Canada’s U.S.-trade-dependent economy.

...

“They aren’t coming into our country to take over, I’ll tell you that,” Mr. Ford said. “I kind of flip this around. What a compliment. We’ll never be a 51st state. Canada’s not for sale. But isn’t it nice that someone thinks we have the greatest country world, and they want access?”

...

The Premier’s comments follow last week’s high-stakes trade drama, in which he backed down from imposing a 25-per-cent surcharge on his province’s electricity exports to the U.S. Mr. Ford’s move prompted a vehement reaction from Mr. Trump, who immediately threatened to double the 25-per-cent duties he was about to impose on Canadian steel and aluminum.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-trump-tariffs-doug-ford-response/

A massive crater on the dark side of the moon apparently has two 2.6km deep canyons leading off. A massive rock hit the moon at 1-2 kilometers per second, creating the huge crater. Extra debris blown off caused the canyons.

cross-posted from: https://ani.social/post/10870831

https://www.pixiv.net/en/artworks/128002699

If you're a Cyberpunk RED player, please skip this post - it contains spoilers for Tales of the Red: Reaping the Reaper.

I GM'd the Drone Fight scene in Reaping the Reaper (Tales of the Red, p94) last session. Here's my set up and thoughts on the module:

Background

The players are picking up a mcguffin for their Johnson in a container port. The opposition is an evil AI called the Reaper. It is aware of the pickup and attacks the party with a handful of drones. The drones are fragile but very mobile.

The module doesn't state the reason for the scene, but I'm guessing it's to show off the Reaper's green skull symbol.

As written, the scene happens after the players pick up the mcguffin, but I moved it to before. Why? I'm not sure - I think I prefer a reward at the end of a fight.

Setup

For a battlemap I used New Atami Container Port - it's large, and I wanted to be able to have some strategic play from the drones. Here's a free alternative, but it's tiny.

The drones only have 15 or 20 HP, and no SP, so I added another Drone Swarm. For the tokens, I used PeaPu's Cyberpunk vehicles. The three drone swarms only have a melee attack, while the heavy air drone has a ranged attack.

I added a friendly security guard that was taking the crew to the mcguffin. He was mostly there for colour.

Rules Adjustment

I allowed players to hop onto containers with a DV 12 Athletics check. Success got them onto the box at the cost of one movement, failure left them on the ground and cost two movement.

Play

I played the drones carefully: the drones have a MOV of 8, so they used the containers as cover and swung around to try and catch the players when they came out of cover. The lack of range weapons on the drone swarms sucked: they couldn't hit a player and get back under cover.

Halfway through the encounter, I ended up giving the drone swarms a light handgun (2d6 damage, ROF2) to present more of a challenge.

The players were able to mostly stay under cover. One of them screwed up and stayed out of cover, taking a few hits.

Analysis of Play

Good:

• the map was great for the ranged drone: it was able to (mostly) stay under cover and land a couple of shots.

• the mechanics of jumping up onto the boxes was nice - it gave the players a way to extend their vision, while jumping off got them into cover. The combat optimized character essentially got the jumps for free (they could only fail on a critical failure), while the other characters failed once, so that added some nice differentiation.

• the friendly security guard presented some colour

Analysis of Module

• The drones don't have enough HP/SP to challenge the players. If I hadn't buffed them, the scene would have been over in a round or two.
• There isn't a plot reason for this encounter: it presents the Reaper's green skull, and uses some of their HP/SP/ammo, but it doesn't move the story forward. It feels like a D&D attrition fight.
• There's a NetArch in the ranged drone. But with a MOV of 8 it's not clear how a Netrunner would maintain contact.

If I ran it again

The scene needs a reason to exist. I'd give it three reasons:

1. The drones are trying to kill the friendly security guard, since he knows where the mcguffin is. They focus him in the fight. If the friendly dies, then the players face a complication to find the mcguffin.

2. The drones should be a threat. I'd have one drone per PC. When they can't hit the friendly, they fire on the players. I'd make each drone a heavy air drone and give it 7 SP on top of 20 HP. Alternatively, buffing the MOV on the swarm from 8 to 12 could give them enough range for melee attacks.

3. Introduce the Reaper (beyond the green skull): give it some dialog from the drones. Troll the players. The Reaper seems like it would troll its victims.

I'd been planning on the Reaper possessing a couple of cranes in the terminal and using them as an environmental weapon. Something like a single attack on the players per round, with a DV 15 Evasion check to avoid 2d6 damage as the magnetic hook drops on them (players can disable the cranes with an aimed shot on the crane's camera that's 25 meters away). But I got carried away and forgot.

Conclusion

This is a poorly designed encounter: it has no reason to exist, the opposition doesn't challenge the players, and there isn't a player goal beyond kill all the ~~goblins~~ drones.

I didn't put much effort into rewriting this encounter, because I'm coming off of Agents of Desire (also Tales of the Red) which is great and needed no extra GM work. I just assumed this one would be good.

I'm seeing high battery use with version 1.58.2. I've switched to full charging at night to get a better view of usage.

Very accessible dark cyberpunk music. All the tracks I've heard are instrumental. I'm enjoying it a lot so far.

I started using Summit a week or two ago, and I really like it. It's a great Lemmy app. But I notice my phone's battery life has taken a hit since then.

According to battery usage, I've been using Summit slightly more than the Reddit app, but Summit has consumed much more battery.

It looks like Carney will be made PM on Friday, he'll have a quick diplomatic tour in Europe, and then he'll call an election.

Interesting that he's doing the European tour first. Presumably he's hoping to come back with assurances of trade agreements to talk about during the election.

Original: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-mark-carney-liberal-leader-transition-prime-minister-explainer/

Ontario is suspending its promise to add a 25 per cent surcharge on exports of electricity to some U.S. states, Premier Doug Ford said Tuesday afternoon.

"As you know, there's a very strong man in Canada who said he was going to charge a surcharge or tariff on electricity coming into our country. He has called and said he's not going to do that. And it would have been a very bad thing if he did. And he's not going to do that. So I respect that," Trump said.

ngl. I'm conflicted. Did Ford ease off too soon, or is this a way to reach an agreement?

cross-posted from: https://biglemmowski.win/post/5421546

independent security researcher Kevin Beaumont and other analysts see evidence that some X origin servers, which respond to web requests, weren't properly secured behind the company's Cloudflare DDoS protection and were publicly visible. As a result, attackers could target them directly

oops

We need to escalate faster and hit harder in our tariff war with the US. That's the argument the most recent Hatchet episode. The reasoning makes sense:

1. The uncertainty around tariffs means that businesses will decide to relocate away from Canada, even if tariffs are never fully implemented. It's just easier to set up shop in the US and skip the tariff risk entirely. The longer the uncertainty drags on, the worse Canada's position becomes.

2. Trump and Musk are doing so many ridiculous things that the US public isn't focusing on the trade war with Canada, which means they aren't putting pressure on their representatives to end the trade war.

3. As time goes on, Canada's unity will fracture. Individual provinces will cave as they receive individual concessions.

The argument is that we should keep export tariffs on potash, energy, and other stuff we're selling into the US so that there's significant short term pain. That pain will convince Trump and co to back off on tariffs and return to our previous relationship.

The Liberal mailing list sent this an hour or two ago. "From" Mark Carney:

I am deeply honoured to be our next Liberal leader – and I’m ready to get to work.

...

We’re going to build the fastest-growing economy in the G7.

We’ll cut taxes that divide us and put money back into your pockets.

We’ll invest in health care, seniors, and affordable child care.

We’ll take bold action on climate, and we’ll protect Canadian workers from Trump’s tariffs.

I really hope that ol affordability crisis just slipped his mind. Tax cuts are fine (even if it's coded language for dropping the carbon tax), but groceries are still crazy expensive and housing is still hard to come by.