Bartimaeus

Goodbye, LC. Love and our best, maybe see you again someday.

Some of you may remember me mentioning the popular vote compact a number of times as the years have gone by. Well... Democrats have finally achieved enough trifectas in state governments to enact the pact. The current compact sits at 222/270 electoral votes, but new additions of Michigan (15), Wisconsin (10), Arizona (11), and Pennsylvania (19) would push it to 277/270. This idiotic electoral college system can finally be put to an end. Texas has sadly missed out on this opportunity, with Democrats winning the State House but narrowly missing the State Senate. It will deadlock legislation there, but...still, with Democrats in every statewide position, I have high hopes that much good will be done there nevertheless.

Wipeout for Republicans. Blue Texas finally happened. They're going to win every statewide race.

1000xRESIST: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1675830/1000xRESIST/ It looks like a game, you move around in it like it's a game, there's a little gameplay here and there...but it's really actually a book - just one where you get to decide how much of the world-building and side-character text you get to indulge in (or not). And as it is a book, you the player have no agency - you are simply along for the ride of story of this world and the characters in it. When I first took a look at it, I did not have a good impression...but I ended up falling in love with it. I think it's one of those things where either you're gonna get into it and it'll be incredibly engrossing...or it'll be too odd and it won't click, and you'll just bounce off of it without understanding the love for it one bit. And that's okay. Something that this game helped me realize? I really hate mouth movements in 3D games. This game does not bother trying to animate characters' mouths, and instead is much more concerned about just expressions and characters being postured correctly for the moment with no regard for that sort of thing, and while it took just a little bit to get used to it in a highly detailed graphical style like this, HOO BOY, I like that so much than all those ugly-ass uncanny mouth and face expressions in other games that are trying to do their best (and failing miserably) to stay synced to voice-acting. I've never gotten used to how bad face-syncing is even decades into full voice-acting being a thing - face animations just aren't there yet to passably mimic actual human faces, and I'm really not sure if I'll ever be able to do anything except for looking away from the screen when I see it in action.

With the way the forums have been behaving for a number of months - sluggish, logging people out frequently, random temporary IP bans, eating posts - I imagine it has gotten to be a bit much for some people...

I think Gamers Nexus did a similar build for the base model and it was only like a $70 premium, though with some caveats re: the custom thermal and power design of the Steam Machine vs. a less power-limited DIY build. It's pretty reflective of the terrible state of PC gaming and computing as a whole, really.

Supposedly, it was meant to start at either $750 or 800...you know, before the current dark times made everything impossible.

@PK htiw klaw eriF A blu-ray of a completely restored version of Ken Russell's The Devils will be releasing...at some point following a theatrical run in October. Warner Bros. finally decided to release it from the vaults before physical media dies altogether.

A friend linked this lady recently and...I've listened to like four albums and liked all of them. I don't quite know how, but her music feels like healing. She's got a kind of grating and obnoxious singing voice, but somehow this is one of those weird cases where I really like that.

I'm sorry, melkathi.

Dear lord. 💀

I have not had any more of the posting issues I mentioned before, and the intermittent logins/logouts seem to have ceased for the time being as well. Thank you!

https://www.windowscentral.com/gaming/xbox/xbox-ceo-asha-sharma-tough-decisions-ahead-what-could-this-mean-for-xbox-helix-xbox-games-studios-or-xbox-exclusives Buy smaller companies, wring 'em, layoffs, close companies... Buy smaller companies, wring 'em, layoffs, close companies... Truly, capitalism at its finest.

I received a 403 error for just a one paragraph post. Would not let me post it no matter what. I resolved it by editing out all the content, writing one word, posting it, then editing the real text into the post. Not ideal.