Bartimaeus

I used to think I got acid reflux, but I actually have the opposite - base reflux. I don't think it's actually called that, but basically my stomach doesn't always produce enough acids on its own, so eating stuff like grapefruit actually helps prevent me from getting acid reflux. This is thankfully a much better situation than the opposite, I find, since it just means that I have to keep eating things I like anyways. I'm also usually not bothered by citrus in regards to lips/mouth, having grown up eating limes and lemons on everything (as well as just by themselves)...buuut four full-sized grapefruits in 24 hours was pushing it for me, . @Azdeus Brutal, .

Don't think I've ever had any kind of Fresca (and honestly, the name only sounds vaguely familiar to me)...but I only drink like one soda a year, so that makes sense, .

I have eaten four entire grapefruits within the last 24 hours. I did this to scientifically test what exactly are the limits of human flesh (specifically the lips and tongue/general mouth area) under a constant deluge of citrus (not great, by the way...not great), and definitely not because I forgot I bought like 8 of them like two weeks ago and want to make sure I eat all of them before they go bad. (e): extra "forgot"

It is a great show. I'm on a little bit of a hiatus with season 2 - not for any particular reason except I've been too busy to really sit down and watch it. IIRC, I was around episode 20, and I don't yet particularly dislike Chibi-Usa (though I don't find her as likable as virtually everyone else in the main cast...yet, and it doesn't help that her appearance has put Mamoru in an uncomfortable/not particularly fun position as well). Will get back to it soon enough. (e): Although I did finally see an episode I didn't particularly care for - it was like episode 16 of the second season, one that was highly Ami-focused. It was such a weirdly awkward episode with all sorts of off-timing for lines and shots that it kind of felt like an alien made it instead of whoever's normally directing/writing these episodes...but things were right back to normal in the next few episodes, so I didn't get too overly fussed about it (and also, watching about 50 episodes of a show like this with no even just mediocre episodes until I'm about 50 in is an amazing feat, and probably a better record than any other show I've watched). Also, yeah, the Roman god names/character allegories are kind of funny, especially as loose as they are - started noticing that weird connection and was surprised to see that even Mamoru had a counterpart as Endymion.

I thought I remembered you being in IT, but now I know you are.

I had a very similar situation in 1st grade. Ruined Santa for a whole lot of other kids. Whoops. My nieces have, to my knowledge, never really mentioned Santa to any meaningful degree for the year and a half or so I've had them, so I can only assume that it wasn't really something they were told about in their former lives...and I think that's probably okay.

Scar tissue cutting off a nerve is much better news than pretty much anything else it could've been! Hope your local hospital is treating the pandemic seriously...

I'm very much looking forward to the day that Bloodborne is emulatable. I played it on the PS4, but I no longer own said PS4. Also, I never learned how to parry, not sure how much of a difference it made.

Hah, I remember listening to some of Pogo's early songs (mostly Disney-related) back in like...the mid- to late-2000s. Of course, back then, he was known as "Fagottron" (for real, not a joke), and I guess since then he's openly come out as being a homophobe and an anti-feminist, and also made a video celebrating the Orlando nightclub massacre from a years back (among other things), which I guess makes a little sense in retrospect. Still makes neat little tunes, though.

Yeah, I really have no idea who will win in that division. Everyone's so bad in so many different and competing ways.

Turning off my ad-blocker to try and figure out what the context of Gromnir repeatedly posting the same obvious and clear point over and over got me like:

That stand, even if it had no functional purpose except for optics (the vote technically received bipartisan support) and a possible footnote in history books, could cost him in his re-election chances with a primary - last I checked a couple of months ago, his approval rate was good with independents and okay (relatively speaking) with Democrats, but had suffered quite badly with Republicans. Lucky for him, his re-election will come in 2024, and if Trumpism is over by then, voters may have well forgotten - if not...

Michigan has been officially certified for Biden, .

Georgia already did a hand-recount as well, which, as I understand it, is much more likely to turn up odd stuff than just another machine count. They did find a set of like 5,000 misplaced ballots during that recount, but they only broke like 60-40 (or somewhere around there) for Trump, so it didn't make too much of a difference. Now if they could somehow get that to magically happen about 10-15 more times during the machine recount, then we'd be cooking. also lmao @ that pdf, judge was mad as hell for them wasting his/her time in the various ways they did

I've seen some of Summoning Salt's videos before (most likely linked by you?), not as familiar with Joseph Anderson, gives off kind of a Matthewmatosis vibe.

People have wildly varying ideas of "not terrible" streamers, and sometimes to their credit, I occasionally see one that doesn't seem reprehensible - but I'm just not that interested in watching other people play games to begin with, especially not for long periods of time. A few minutes-long focused skit video a la someone like Dunkey, okay, sure - a few hours of some guy or gal talking yapping over an entire game for a few hours, no sir, not for me. Luckily, I'm not being forced to watch other people stream, so that's okay - though I'll occasionally watch the top speedrun of a game I've recently played (though usually with lots of skipping if it's a longer game), but at least the good speedrunner streamers are usually quieter than your average loudmouth twitch streamer.

Let's assume the Saruman comparison holds true... "He spent his final days as a small-time criminal master in Hobbiton known as Sharkey (from the Orkish sharkû, meaning "old man"), until he was overthrown in the Battle of Bywater. In the aftermath of that battle Frodo confronted Saruman and exiled him from the Shire, but before he could leave, Gríma Wormtongue killed Saruman by slitting his throat with a dagger, on the very doorstep of Bag End." So, in Trump terms...he'll go back to being a slumlord until he's arrested for his crimes (whether federal or state) and subsequently gets Epsteined the night before his trial starts? Or wait, maybe he only gets Epsteined *after* the trial concludes where somehow he escapes getting thrown into prison but loses all of his assets? I'm not sure. Personally, I'm more in favor of "serving remainder of his life in prison" than yet another "mysterious death that will be forever martyrized/conspiracied* by fascists or other types of baskets of deplorables" - getting kind of sick of those. *Yes, I did just make that word up.

Yeah, I think Chibusa hinted at that herself towards the end of the episode, and the show has pretty consistently stuck to the things it's 'hinted at' (sometimes more like 'openly broadcasted') so far. I'll have to figure out the details of how her sudden appearance came to be, but it'll probably be a few days before I get a chance, .

I don't know if she's going to be terrible for the rest of the show or not, but Mini Moon or whatever her name is had the most amazing introduction for a new character in a show with an already set cast that I think I've ever seen. Literally just dropped out of the sky from nowhere and with basically no warning, landed directly onto Usagi's head while she was in the middle of her 'perfect kiss', making her faceplant straight into the ground while also stealing the kiss (with a guy probably about three times her height...and age - cue Chris Hansen's "why don't you sit over there"), then pulled out a gun and shot Usagi square in between the eyes from point blank range. It's tough to get better than that, .

That makes a lot of sense, since this storyline is absolutely pants (not that I mind - if anything, the opposite!) and I was struggling to see how it could connect to any sort of main plot unless the rest of the show was going to have no real plot, . I forget that anime can have filler due to being produced faster and in greater amounts than whatever source material it comes from. And yeah, I've already been able to tell that there's no way this is going to end up with the two aliens getting melted, they're just not evil enough and there's too much silliness between them (and hell, they haven't even actually tried to kill anyone - just drain people's energy). (e): The most annoying part of this season has been that all the monsters seem to be incapable of speech...except that they keep repeating their names like they're dumb Pokemon. The Dark Kingdom monsters could all talk, and frequently did, so that's kind of a step down (especially since some of those monsters had hilarious lines). But if I'm already near the end of this storyline, then presumably this type of monster is going to go with it, and we'll have some other type with different mannerisms/rules for whatever's the next threat.

I'm about ten episodes into Sailor Moon R. I don't remember who said it, but it has indeed fundamentally remained the same Sailor Moon of the first season. It hasn't been quite as ridiculously fun and humorous as the first season, but it's pretty close (and has only been getting better and better - like the first few episodes of the first season, things are seemingly just getting more ridiculous the more episodes I watch). My understanding is that I am only a few episodes away from the most hated character in the show being introduced - I can only hope that the new English dub did a good job with her and she's not nearly as annoying as in the original English or Japanese, but we'll see.

https://lawandcrime.com/2020-election/attorneys-left-scratching-their-heads-as-trump-campaign-lawyer-does-the-unthinkable-in-michigan/ tl;dr: Trump lawyer in Michigan files motion to dismiss their own lawsuit on false grounds (i.e. that the county did not certify their results - they did). January can't come soon enough.

Catchy song, though I could barely hear it in the movie.

If nothing else, it doesn't hurt to be strategic about when you vote third party. If Trump was 90% your guy, while whomever the Libertarian (or other) Party is putting up is 95% your guy or gal, you're probably going to vote for Trump because he has a great chance at winning and you're good with 90% of him and that's a pretty great percentage all things considered for a politician who has a very real shot at winning. If, on the other hand, Trump is like maybe 50% at best your guy and you utterly detest him personally and you're really actually kind of hoping that he eventually ends up in prison, while his main opposition is not sitting that far below him for you but you *don't* utterly detest them (but still can't possibly support their platform/policies), then yeah, voting third party starts to feel like it makes a lot of sense even if you know nothing much will come of it. Especially if you feel as though it's an important civic duty to vote to begin with, which some people do - even when it's very difficult to do so (...whether because a certain party has literally made it difficult to do so or because the candidates are all terrible). Meanwhile, Alaska approved ranked choice voting via a ballot measure while Massachusetts rejected it via the same. Huh? Makes no sense to me, especially with neighbor state Maine having implemented it for these past two elections very successfully. Apparently, Massachusetts voters thought it would be "too complicated". What a bunch of dummies.

Reuters: "Trump asked for options for attacking Iran last week, but held off" ...for now Didn't he already try this when he bombed one of their airports (and assassinated a...general or something in the process)? Also, Georgian Secretary of State (who is Republican) says Senator Lindsey Graham is/was pressuring him to throw legitimate ballots out.