Bartimaeus

From political discussion I've seen, it's not clear whether or not statehood bills are subject to the filibuster rules. The filibuster rules did not exist as they currently do the last time a state was admitted to the Union. They most likely are (probably to be determined by the Parliamentarian?), but also, if Senators Sinema and Manchin so desired, they could also easily pass an exemption specifically for statehood bills in the same way that cabinet/judge nominations are exempted. How likely that is...depends on the senators in question, and that is difficult indeed to project.

Finally just took an ibuprofen after a miserable morning. My understanding was that you're supposed to wait 24 hours unless you're having a truly terrible reaction, so that your immune system can do its job and make those antibodies. Well, that's just how long I waited, because my head was about to explode. At least I haven't thrown up or anything - just a headache and nerve pain everywhere, mostly.

Got my second shot yesterday. Felt fine all day, though I did get very suddenly fatigued towards the end of the day, prompting me to go to bed immediately. Woke up, feel like I was run over by a train, everything hurts and I can barely see straight. I check and I've got a fever of 101. Eh, yeah, I guess that'll do that. Quit working so hard, immune system - this is literally all your doing! Guess that'll probably be good for antibodies, but it sure feels like death right now.

Yeah, that really just goes hand in hand with it being an institutional brokenness. If literally just about an entire precinct is composed of provably terrible cops, and there are precincts all around the country just like it, then the question must be asked - how is this institution selecting or creating ONLY bad cops? That's not normal, that's not just random chance - in other institutions that are not similarly broken, you would at the very least get a roughly equal number of good and bad members. If it's not, well, your institution is broken - and it is. It really literally is, in multiple ways.

Yeah, let me be clear: I do believe it's absolutely an institutional issue. I'm not trying to say there are no good cops - not at all, we're talking about humans after all, so there's bound to be a wide range of types even if the particular profession in question does unfortunately necessarily attract more of the power-tripping authoritarian types. However, if the institution itself makes it so that every member at every level of the institution is conditioned to never hold each other accountable for genuine wrongdoing (whether through its own internal culture and systems or through the rest of the related legal system that is supposed to have at least some ability to oversee it), then the institution as a whole is broken, and it starts making sense why an increasingly large number of people start to see what should otherwise be good cops as being exactly the same as bad cops when all members of the institution are equally working to enable the bad to continue to occur...and yeah, that's exactly what's happened. And I...and I think pretty much everyone else, have literally no good, realistic ideas on how to really fix that: it's a broken institution. How much easier it would be to change or replace a few individuals - and so I guess the system persists with neither good ideas nor political will to implement them.

These two are not compatible with each other, and is probably the biggest component of why nothing changes with our policing institution - if the good ones (and DAs and judges) held the bad ones accountable, the institution would have already necessarily reformed simply as a result of that. Alas, we are where we are today for a reason.

Everything about PoE felt way too overdesigned and mechanical to me. There was a lot of really silly and stupid stuff in the IE games, but I didn't feel like they were made by a team of robots whose only driving design intent was an all-powerful "balance"/"everything needs to be equal" goal - in the IE games, there was charm and oddity, there were items and spells/abilities that worked better than others, there were enemy encounters that were a little too easy or a little too hard for where they are in the game, there were piles of secrets, the games had atmosphere...everything in PoE felt so by the numbers, like everything had been designed from a series of templates by which they could never stray, it just wasn't interesting or fun to me. That, and the number of minor combat encounters that took up way too much time and mental effort to get through for very little reward - the combat in that game, particularly at the lowest levels of just like "where is the exact perfect spots that I need my guys to stand, and in what exact order do I need each of my characters to fight these enemies with what particular weapons or abilities" etc., requires much more precision and consideration than the IE games, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, except that if you're going to have every encounter take that much time and consideration, there really needs to be less of it compared to all of the trash fights in the IE games (which, in comparison, often last for literally mere seconds and practically might as well not even be there). I heard the second game improved in this regard, but I sadly never tried it.

Actually, I had trouble figuring out how I wanted to rate stuff until I had a large enough sample size that it made relative comparisons actually make sense to me. It was only when I had at least over a hundred different ratings that I started feeling more comfortable with how I was rating stuff. A single 90% for one of my all-time favorite movies has practically zero meaning (even to me, the one rating!) without the context of a hundred other titles that I like somewhere between a little less and a lot less sitting underneath it. Even now, my ratings for stuff that is below 80% (80% means "great" and requires that it be a favorite of mine to receive a rating that high - it's a special cutoff for me, I don't hand out >=80%s very often), a lot of stuff really could wiggle up or down 5% if I start overthinking them which tells you it's by no mean an objective measure...but everything's relatively where it should be now and gives a sort of model of what I like and what I don't like. Congratulations on finishing S1, and glad you like it. It'll be somewhat of a return to normalcy for a bit to start S2 (something to keep in mind with the show is that Cartoon Network obligated SU to have a certain number of "no meaningful dependency upon the main plot because we don't want to confuse the KEEDS with too much of that PLOT stuff" episodes each season - it's a lot less in seasons past 1, thankfully, but they're still there and some of them are absolutely the least interesting out of their respective seasons). Also, something that is objective: Birdmom is the best.

I don't rate shows*, but I do rate just about every single movie I watch. It's more about keeping track of what I've watched, relating how I felt about them to other things I've seen and how I rated those, not really any attempt at objectively measuring them. Also, people who rate stuff in increments of anything but 5% or 10% (e.g. 84%) are literal psychopaths that should be put down. *Somewhat because I don't have a platform to do it on, somewhat because shows are much more difficult to encapsulate and rate compared to a 1-3 hour movie. Yeah, Amethyst is thankfully more interesting and fun than just being the irreverent slob she initially appeared to be, .

I actually just re-watched 190, and was kind of marveling that they had such a serious episode that was also legitimately good. Sailor Moon has struggled its entire run with the more serious episodes, and it seems like they actually finally figured out how to make them more interesting and compelling in this final season. That or it's just because Sailor Stars is infinitely better than SuperS so even the story episodes are megatons better - I suppose that's a possibility too, . ...But no, really. Although apparently the last handful of episodes to end the series sucks(?), so that'll kind of diminish the achievement a little, but up until then, they had it down. Really, the only thing this season is missing is better and more meaningful individual character moments like S had - that aren't Usagi, that is. She is fantastic in pretty much every way in Sailor Stars, but the ideal would've been more of a team effort, I think. If it had also had that, this could've legitimately claimed to have been the best season...that, and if they had done the animation right, . Maybe there's a distinction between "watched" and "saw" here? You're translating from German, so I don't have any clue at all if it applies, but when I hear somebody say they "watched" a show, it carries the connotation they watched all of it or at least a significant stretch of it - no such connotation with "saw". The first anime I ever saw was...probably The Flying House or Superbook from old VHSes my mom recorded when she a kid/young teen (her mom and her were big into VHS recordings). My mom wasn't allowed to watch much when she was a kid (ultra-fundamentalist upbringing), but she was allowed to watch that sweet, sweet 80s Christian anime yo. Yeah, I've got that one queued up for some time in the future. It seems weird and bizarre enough that maybe I enjoy it, even if the animation is very off-putting. Plus...yep, you guessed it - it's short! So we'll see, . And yeah, Sailor Moon can be pretty good at that fremdschamen thing... I, uh, don't think I can ever get into Cardcaptor. There's a certain level of uncomfortableness I can cross into in the hopes of finding something I'll like...but I think Cardcaptor Sakura is sadly quite a bit beyond that, .

I decided against a proper NAS myself - I've set up a couple before, and I think it's just too much hassle to manage for all of my different needs. Up until recently, I was using my old Phenom II X4 system from like ten years back as a fairly rudimentary Windows HTPC with the Plex Server software on it that also had local network shares and remoting in enabled, and just had it running 24/7. Since I upgraded to a Ryzen system recently though, I just swapped it out and now am using my previous i7-4770k system for that purpose instead - a bit more efficient, and mercifully a lot more powerful than the old Phenom II system, . Also, thanks to the increased threads and RAM of the "new" HTPC, I can have VMs on that system permanently running for some other purposes. I know some folks who literally have 100+ TBs of storage, and it's a bit loony tunes - I'm not one of the big boys...but I did get a little closer today, . The fact that I always mirror everything will always make everything a lot more difficult, of course - I can't not mirror, I hate data loss too much.

...Yes, and definitely not 16K Sailor Moon rips that I don't have. I mean, who would even want such a thing? (Real talk: TV and movies take up a lot of space, particularly if you have an OCD thing where you prefer not to encode your favorite shows/movies from raw bluray dumps because transcodes are inherently evil.)

I keep hearing talk how there's likely to be a hard drive shortage in the near future. Don't know if it's going to happen for sure, but happened to see some 14 TBs for $200 each and bought 4 rather than risking it and regretting it. It's just as well - I was at the limits of my ~16 TB anyways, and I like to keep my data in at least a basic mirror.

My situation is a little different than yours, but I kind of know how you feel - really miss being able to eat quick and easy stuff. WHY CAN'T I HAVE A POPTART IF I WANT TO HAVE A POPTART, LIFE? Let me eat my garbage! Sadly, everything pre-made is primarily wheat (which in your case, means carbs) or sugar, if not both.

tbf futurevision would probably make me lose my mind too, that would be terrifying seeing so many possibilities of death all around you. Especially for a weak human - we legitimately are capable of dying from incredibly small things every day. Garnet, on the other hand? Not much around that can kill her, and she's way more equipped to navigate past the few possibilities that pop up. I kinda...almost want fish stew pizza, until I actually really look at it. there is so much wrong with this It's further sad for especially me, because I'm...just not really an anime person, try as I might. I wish I weren't so...picky about stuff like this sometimes. There's just this very small range of anime 'styles' (more than just the art - tone, tropes, dialogue, character design/expressions/voices, etc.) that I can wrap my head around, and Sailor Moon just happened to be one of the very few that hit my brain right and made me legitimately want to give it a shot. I'm still gonna try to roll with Madoka because one, it's incredibly short; and two, the visuals, as I recall you mentioning way back when, are deliberately a bit antithetical to the content, and well, I've played Doki Doki Literature Club which does the same thing and very much enjoyed it even with the most ridiculously anime of visuals, so I gotta at least give it a chance. ...Also, it's short, . Sailor Moon will always be special to me as well - never as much as it could be for you, of course, but to be delighted with and fall in love with an entire ensemble of characters, even in such an incredibly silly show like Sailor Moon, is such a rare occurrence for me, it's automatically special. SU:

That would be the ideal...but there's probably a reason actual real life places only give you a tiny amount of them, as opposed to Steven getting entire bags/trays of them. My impression was that "the bits" at Frymans is the leftover crud that actually gets stuck in the friar itself that they would normally clean out at the end of the day, whereas at a fast food place like McDonalds, they seem more like tiny chunks of fries that get especially well cooked as a result of that size. It is a little sad that our Sailor Moon group watch is finally coming to an end. Heh: I started like a month before you, majestic, maybe like a couple before KP, and like 3-4 before InsaneCommander...and I'll be the last to finish. I also have three specials left - "Ami's First Love", "Make Up! Sailor Guardians", and the "SuperS Special". I'm a little afeared of what awaits me in the SuperS Special. Well, how interesting 'reactions' are often part the content and part the individuals reacting. If all our reactions were completely brainless or even outright obnoxious, it wouldn't be nearly as fun, . I don't want to read 99% of the SU fanbase's reactions to anything SU... (actual SU spoiler meant for majestic) ...but I can listen to something like Lindsay Ellis' thoughts for hours on something I don't even care the slightest about. So yeah, depends on the people, .

Wedge fries are death. And I hate to admit it, but KP probably has a point - in the real world, those "bits" that have been sitting in the fryer all day are very likely to be burnt fossils instead of the idealized version Steven always gets. Give me some good shoestring fries.

The texture of a potato is disgusting...unless it has been properly fried and crisped. Ergo, Steven does indeed know what he's talking about, .

I don't know if I should be allowed to pick what video games I play anymore.

Yeah, I'm like the opposite of a foodie, and in fact, when I tried the show for the first time, I watched the first five episodes and specifically remember being very put off by all the food and eating in it (and I wouldn't come back to the show a lot later as a result). First episode had Cookie Cats, second episode was fries, third episode was hamburgers and bagels, fourth episode was...that Together Breakfast monstrosity, fifth episode was Frybo. I ain't tryna watch no gross food cartoon - after I came back to it, the food focus disappeared for a while and I got over it when it occasionally was a thing again.

LET'S CHOP IT UP, JUST CHOP IT UP, AND SERVE IT WITH LINGUINI! AL DENTE! ...AL DENTE! That's a novel way of describing it.

Sailor Moon After Dark, episode 190:

Hey, look, cosplays - another thing I cannot and will not ever understand, try as I might. The only way I can even kind of accept them is when I keep in mind that most - most - of the people doing them are just doing it for some kind of goofy fun. It's all I've got. them clowning on each other was like the only interesting or fun part of their entire relationship throughout the entire series outside of a very rare episode here and there Yeah, a lot of Naoko's own drawings seem pretty sexualized (and never mind the WRITING, as you've pointed out)...but been there, done that, forgiven her given the situation. But yeah, completely unaware fanidiots have a tendency to ruin everything whenever you interact with them on their favorite things - throw 'em all in the trash. I'm borderline hypercritical of my own favorite things - you could take literally any of my favorite movies, games, or TV series and I could point out a number of objective flaws or at least subjective things that I feel could've been done a little more effectively in different ways. That's the beauty of art, particularly highly collaborative art that has tons of people involved, not to mention all of the moving parts and compromise making games or film requires given resource constraints and deadlines...and that's the way it's always going to be. If you ever find something that is truly literally perfect for you all the way through (themes and ideas, characters, plot, setting, dialogue, technical execution...the whole shebang), hold it closely forevermore, because that is a rare occurrence indeed.

really dumb, but I laughed:

Ah, see, that's what I mean when I say I'm lacking the proper context for it to register as being worse. This is simply not my forte, so I'm more looking at their outfits just for what they are rather than any additional connotations, . She definitely looks incredibly weird and off-putting...but the way I was looking at it, at least she has some actual clothes on instead of going full anime skimpiness. Soul Hunter Sailor Heavy Metal Papillon? What a legendary name. The lady...not so much from the looks of it. (although not for Fish's Eye, but the actual good ones, lol) Nothing like realizing literally everyone is wrong and thus were always irrelevant to begin with, huh? Don't even know what that is, probably don't want to know what that is. I certainly don't mind trying to figure out where more subtle characters are standing in relation to each other (NEWS FLASH: Sailor Moon characters are NOT in any way subtle), but there's a big difference between "trying to figure out" and "actively re-writing as if my feelings have any merits to the outside world whatsoever", .