OttoVonSuds

Progressivism A shortlived political movement from 1890 to around 1903 that fizzled out. Center-Left to left reformism was taken up by the shortlived Liberal era in the republicans from 1915-1927 and during the Radical Era of 1933-1949. Progressivism was known for it's favoring trusts, strong but regulated corporate power, a strong focus on middle class uplift of the working class's behavior, new expanded morals legislation. It is the consensus of most historians that Progressivism, along with the Populists/Bryan's factions in the democrats represent the last serious efforts at social reform involving moral reform as the focus. The "Chicago School" of historians starting in the 1980s has made the case that Progressivism influenced the Fascist movement in italy and the soviet union, making the implicit argument that both fascism and communism would have been worse had progressivism become a serious faction in the United States. Most popular culture references of progressivism involve

*** The world has had it's particular 'quirks' since the early to mid 1930s. As of 2010, the world has been in a state where The Age of Superheroes always started 10-15 years ago[1], with various old footage/historical textbooks all being edited mysteriously to show that's the case. The only exceptions to this are those that were stored in faraday cages for a few years -- this accidental discovery was what got people to notice that the Age of Superheroes always started sometime between ten or fifteen years in the past by the early 1960s. The basic historical trends of this world ended up following much the same path as in the real world possibly due to the constant slow advancement of when The Age of Superheroes began to keep things on track. Hitler got into a fight he couldn't finish[2], Japan joined him in stupidity, the west and soviets fell out and now China is a rising second superpower. All of this comes with lots of Shenanigans by men, women and people who replaced their

*** THE EMPIRE OF THE QING Much has changed in China since 1898, even if the monarchy still exists and bureaucrats wear robes. Despite being an authoritarian, nationalistic government with strongly statist economic policies the Qing Empire isn't just a rightwing version of OTL's People's Republic of China even if there are similarities such as having a large secret police[1], an economic agenda focused on modernization to name two examples. One of the biggest differences in China's retaining confucian-style "collective responsibility' and using the bao jia/household system as the means for surveillance/taxation/distributing welfare. Anoher strong difference is that China is structurally theoretically[2] an abolutist monarchy, as opposed to a party-state. Despite no communism, China's economy is only relatively as large as OTL's due to the United States not seeing any reasons to let east asia's exporters run one-way trade wars combined with the Qing favoring

Usually I don't do cultural PODs as descriptions but here's a piece requested by one of my friends. Yes, it's another scenario suggested by Mako-chan, the same person behind "Crazy days". This one has been sitting in the archives for something like 7 to eight years. The divergence is that the fashion designer who in OTL discovered "Twiggy" in 1966 instead in 1958 finds someone else. He notices an overweight 18 year old redhead who he describes in his private journal as having "a slight double chin, smallish breasts, a bubble butt and baby face" but "still very pretty in kind of a harmless girl next door sort of way. Kind of cherubic I guess."[1] As a bet with one of his friends, he decides to recruit her as a model, using the name "Bubble". Surprisingly she is popular and that fashion designer's works sell. His friend is out a few grand. Within a few years, other designers pick up on it. Think of it as a cultural shift paralleling OTL's move towards thinner and thinner girls in

THE FREE HUMAN POWERS Seventy years after the treaty of Brisbane, the free human powers still stand in opposition to the Lizards. Not standing united since humanity remains quarrelsome and divided as ever. Human technology hasn't closed the gap with their adversaries, but in many ways isn't that far behind the lizards. There are clunky fusion plants, human military technology has caught up with then and they're only a few years away from making spacecraft capable of in-system activity as fast as lizard craft: starships are well beyond current capabilities[1], but the scientists are talking generations or more optimistic, decades and not centuries at this point. The fine details are of course either expensive or at this point impossible to keep up although, human scientists already point out what strides have been made so far since it's essentially a series of extremely complicated engineering problems as opposed to inventing NEW solutions. If the LIZARDS could invent this, catching