Nacarbac

"Warfighting Warfighters Foundation: America's Warfighting Navy"

I recall seeing a video of her as a young university student, making a fairly progressive speech with what seemed like some actual passion - so perhaps she started out as a far better person than who she became.

...but it does mean she's just American Liz Truss.

It's very, very, similar to GURPS Transhuman Space - mainly adding Cortical Stacks from Altered Carbon, spessmagic, and an apocalypse.

There wouldn't be many problems just running the setting with THS.

"Jeeves, jot down this tweet for me. Send it to that chick."

Birds?

I don't know if the power density would actually be high enough to cook birds... but I don't really care to check because it'll never be built in reality so real-world performance is irrelevant, and sci-fi maser satellites are cool. Unless you're a bird.

Godzilla X Kong was just dumb cyborgmonkeypunching fun: "he hurt his arm, luckily we made a punch-gooder-arm and it's right here, like a hundred metres away".

And well, I enjoyed the impersonal force of nature that Godzilla was when responding to threats - straight line to target, not even noticing the cities in the way.

The Easter Island episode of Fall of Civilizations was quite eye opening on the western habit of casual extermination, mythologisation as cautionary tales of "inferior savages", and commercialisation to sell plastic moai as cute garden toys with no history whatsoever.

too big, no kit

OBSOLETE is pretty good about that. It handwaves the need for technobabble to explain why not just better tanks with "aliens trade unarmoured superscience 8ft tall mecha skeletons for limestone" - so weaponised mecha rely on "RL" technologies being adapted to those skeletons, and access to mecha is pretty much global, rather than them being for superpowers only.

Cannot remember the politics of it though...

You mean you don't find rolling the Iconic d20^TM^ fifty times in an hour to be a thrilling visual experience that engages you with the Iconic brand and makes you want a t-shirt expressing your enjoyment of said dice rolling?

But another part is ironically the decentralization of research effort as it is privatized.

A negative decentralisation of research into redundant and insular walled gardens, alongside techbro cults? Clearly this is a precursor to the Adeptus Mechanicus.

I do that, erratically.

Most of the time I just do the usual reflexive "good, you?" exchange. But it's good to be a little bit mercurial or playful about playing along - if they're weirded out, well, it broadens the mind and all that so it's good for both of us. Amusing either way.

Semi-serious, because I would like it: The most anarchic of creatures are the cat and the various cephalopods, and thus the highest awards possible are a lil' sleepy cat pin, octopus tentacle holding a hammer, or cuddlefish.