Bartimaeus

One of my most horrific mistakes as a general PC person was when I was about 15 years old. I was putting together my second ever self-built system, but was having trouble getting it to POST - it was just a black screen hang on boot. I still don't know exactly what happened, but I decided to shut down the system and re-seat the RAM to see if that was it, since it's a semi-common problem that the RAM isn't seated quite right for random boot issues like this. Only...when I powered it down, it uh, didn't actually power down, and I somehow completely failed to notice that (seriously, the fan on the CPU was still going!) as I ripped the first RAM module out of the live system. The terrible sounds the system made as I was doing that were kind of traumatizing. Luckily for me, the system did not appear to sustain any kind of damage, and that did actually end up seemingly being the problem, as everything worked fine after I re-seated them (and in fact, everything with that system besides the GPU still works to this day, even the kind of low-ish end PSU I bought at the time). Haven't ever screwed around with making sure the power is completely off (and drained!) since then.

I really need a new CPU just for encoding stuff, my i7-4770k has been making it very difficult and more time-consuming than it needs to be as of the past couple of years. Still looking to upgrade to a Ryzen within the next year or so...

I would agree that it looks like NC is likely going to Trump (outside of a deluge of late Democrat-favoring mail-in ballots a la the Arizona senate race 2 year ago), but strongly disagree on Georgia: the top analytics guys are still (albeit very narrowly) favoring Biden there, and it's going to be really close either way it ends: very likely within 0.5 points.

Yes, if he does win Michigan, then Biden would need to win in Georgia to make up for it (note: the New York Times, which has had Georgia as one of its special ultra-analyzed states looking at votes cast vs. expected votes on a precinct by precinct level, currently has Georgia in a dead heat with Biden having a very small 0.3 lead as of 85% of counting - much too close to call). But it is not currently expected that Trump will win Michigan - the day-of votes do favor Trump, but it is expected that the mail-in votes will push it back to Biden (and the same is true with Pennsylvania, albeit closer). (e): 0.4 expected lead for Biden with 91% counted in Georgia. It's going to be close.

More or less agreeing with Zoraptor here: from where the analytics and I are sitting, the race has appeared to tilt towards Biden. I don't know how everything will work out with Trumps' plans to stay in the White House no matter the results, but with Biden's Arizona victory (although perhaps a tad bit presumptive by Fox in calling it so early), Biden only needs to get the rest of what he is heavily expected to get in order to win. He does not need PA, GA, or NC, although those three would certainly be nice and there are strong indications that he could win in each of those. I am a lot more apprehensive about getting at least 50-50 control of the Senate.

Yep, which is why though Florida wasn't officially called early, it was very obvious when Miami (which has historically been Democrats' greatest stronghold in the state) went for Biden waaay less than it did for Clinton (and remember that Clinton lost 4 years ago, so). @the_dog_days Pennsylvania will take a while because it doesn't start counting mail-in ballots until...today? After today? Florida, meanwhile, counted all of them in advance.

Each state has their own individual amount of electoral votes as determined by their population. Winning Republican North Dakota (about 700k population) is only worth 3 such electoral votes, while winning Democrat California (39 million) is worth 55. The electoral college does skew towards giving smaller states more electoral voting power, though. If you calculate California vs North Dakota, for example, California has about 55 times the population but only about 18 times the electoral votes. It's much, much worse for the Senate, our most important legislative body, where each state only has two senatorial seats regardless of population, which means California's two senators represent an average of about 19.5 million people each, while North Dakota's is about 350k people each.

Almost certainly, based on analytics breaking down the voting tendencies on a precinct by precinct basis. It's all but impossible for Biden to catch up.

It may bode poorly for Biden that Trump has won Florida so early.

I recognized only The Residents and Tangerine Dream. It's weird to think that there's just so much stuff out there, whether movies, music, books, shows, games, whatever, that it's just impossible to ever catch up on everything that is/was considered to be "culturally relevant". There's just too much.

I don't understand your question: what would they be wrong about? 538 claims to be a statistical model estimating the chances of certain outcomes happening based on past outcomes in similar circumstances (or at least situation they *think* are similar), not any kind of magical predictor saying that one thing will happen or another won't. The chances of rolling a 1 on a ten-sided die is 1/10, which is to say not particularly likely, but certainly within the realm of reason. You roll that die, and maybe it's a 1...or maybe it's a 10. Either way, you're not wrong for calculating the chances. Statistics, not magical prediction.

Check out Photopea: it's a shockingly competent and free Photoshop knockoff (and even has some features that Photoshop doesn't have, as well as support for some newer filetypes that Photoshop has refused to support, like the increasingly popular .webp). My only complaint is that there's no desktop version, and it has to be run through the browser...but even with that caveat, it's a better alternative to Photoshop than anything else I've tried so far.

Except for the very few "serious mode" episodes I've seen so far, all of the premises of every episode have been absurd, but in a show where you have an evil cabal of alien supervillains attempting to corrupt and take over the world if not for a handful of teenage girls all living within one square mile of each other that the villains could easily avoid by just taking their plans slightly outside of that one square mile, it's really more about what silliness you can get out of those premises than what the premises themselves are, . That "lose weight" episode was probably my favorite early season 1 episode and was when I realized this show could be great, though. One thing I really like so far is that there are literally no characters that I dislike or even feel particularly ambivalent towards. Every character has had their own kind of charm as well as niche to fill. That is an incredibly rare feeling for a show for me, and makes it so I've never been bored or annoyed when an episode suddenly pivots to or revolves around a particular character. Hoping that stays true, although from what you implied, it might not in later seasons!

How different are they from the first? For "fun", I actually rewatched the first few episodes with the DIC dubs, because I realized that the funny clips I had seen from the show were actually from that original dub. Usagi herself is...okay, but almost literally every other character I heard was somewhere between poor and terrible. Special shout-out to Naru (...who is renamed to "Molly" in the DIC dub) whose weird, terrible, and fake-sounding southern drawl makes me want harm myself every time she talks, . The clips on YouTube that I'd seen of this dub were much later into the show, and I can only presume that they got a little better as time went on (and in fact, I'm pretty sure some of the voice actors must've changed entirely, as Usagi herself as well as Tuxedo Mask don't sound at all like what I heard of them).

Trying to upload my avatar keeps screwing up its colors. It should look like this: ...but instead looks like this: A strong color tone shift, and I'm not certain why, since the end image is still a .png (and a legitimate one at that from examining it closely in Photoshop, even if it is downscaled). Not a huge deal, but seems/looks weird. Latest version of Firefox.

Liked that and Psych a lot, they were both on/came out around the same time on USA (the network). Ultimately, they are just silly detective shows of which there are about a billion of, but having good humor and non-totally contemptible characters and writing goes a long way, . Sailor Moon update: I'm halfway through the first season, it's unbelievably dumb, and I'm officially in love with it, . I didn't think the first anime show I loved would be...this, of all things. It's an absolutely hilarious and adorable show.

Used to get free pan pizzas from Dominoes years back whenever a no-hitter was...uh, hit. Hm, that doesn't sound right. Always thought Dominoes' tomato sauce tasted like trash, so I always got them with no sauce...ended up converting me to sauceless pizzas in general, actually, though as of the past few years I can't really eat much pizza at all for dietary reasons. I think Papa Johns then became their main pizza sponsor, and didn't do anything fun like that, .

Yeah, and I'm also pretty sure the cow in the field that I saw get obliterated was uncomfortably real, too.

Come and See (1985). I don't remember who recommended this a while back, it might've been @Gorth or someone else. Thought the first half was a bit of a...bizarre slough, some good parts but also some parts I didn't really think worked all that well. Second half was just an endless nightmare of scenes from hell, and made for a much more compelling watch. If I had to hazard a guess, I don't think where and what they filmed towards the end would constitute as "safe working conditions" for American and European film-making these days! Really helped make me feel like I was actually in an invasion. Liked it a lot overall. Wait Until Dark (1967). Decent old-fashioned thriller, but not really my cup of tea. Someone else who loved The Children's Hour, which I loved, recommended it, but besides having Audrey Hepburn star, I didn't really see much of a connection between the two in really any meaningful way. The Truman Show (1998). Pretty good, but a bit too ham-fisted and on the nose. I wish the setup had been less obvious (and in fact, wished they waited until much later to reveal what was going on - it was so, so early when it happened and I didn't really understand why) and that it was written a little more subtly. Jim Carrey is a lot of fun. Pretty in Pink (1986). One I've avoided for a long time because it's always seemed...too 80s, but it was pretty fun and enjoyable. The lead lady, I forget her name, has always been fun in whatever I've seen of her. The ending was a bit...dissatisfying.

That makes sense, and what a coinkydink, I also have almost absolutely zero interest in general superhero stuff either, . I have Paranoia Agent already queued up, actually! Looks a bit different from the rest of Satoshi Kon's stuff, but I'm very interested in trying it out.

Hey, I actually read up on the definition of shonen, and that's not literally the definition of shonen from what I saw...but uh, it may very well functionally be, haha. Definitely a genre I won't be revisiting in the future.

Thanks for the recommendations. I'd heard of Your Name and had it bookmarked, but I've always had the feeling I may not care for it based on what I know and have seen of it. Still plan on giving it a try eventually, though. Perfect Blue and Tokyo Godfathers are probably my favorite non-Ghibli anime movies that I've seen so far (and I've watched the rest of Satoshi Kon's films, but was super not into Paprika, and just thought Millennium Actress and Memories were decent). Also planned on trying out Cowboy Bebop and Neon Genesis Evangelion, but...also cases where I feel like, yes, they're beloved, but I still have the feeling that they probably won't be for me. I usually have a good intuitive feeling for these things, although anime has been harder for me to gauge than most other things so far. We'll see...eventually. @KaineParker Good to know. The entire style of the show seemed like it was made for...like, autistic male children/young teens? That's not trying to be an insult, either - that's really what it feels like the target audience is, which, okay, fine, that's not me, I guess. Why is the main character having minute-long monologues in the middle of every action scene and conversation to explain how he's feeling every few minutes? Dear lord, not even literal children's cartoons usually resort to this much hand-holding - most humans have the ability to read expressions and have normal empathetic responses when you actually have a compelling story/character. Why does everything have to be screamed, yelled, or cried? Why do the characters themselves come across as low-functioning autistic, on top of having seemingly paper-thin characterization? Man, it was bad. Will also eventually check out Jojo's.

I've grown to rather like Dak since after his rookie season, was horrible to see his injury and him crying. Hope better days are to come for and from him. Cowboys have had two very likable QBs in a row now. @Keyrock How has Mike McCarthy seemed as head coach so far? I have never been gladder than these past few weeks that the Packers separated from him when they did, but mainly on the back of Matt LaFleur's playcalling (which I have been reading analysis comparing him to Mike McCarthy when he was still here basically on a weekly basis and it seems pretty much everyone agrees that LaFleur has been brilliant in making things as easy as possible for Rodgers, whereas McCarthy was doing the opposite the for a number of years), and not based on how he's doing with the Cowboys.

On the recommendation of a (younger) friend, I tried out an anime show called My Hero Academia some weeks back. I had looked at some of the character designs (and read about their personalities) in advance and thought, "hey, even though I pretty much universally hate anime shows, maybe this could actually be okay, these characters seem like they could be cool". I have since learned what the genre label "shonen" means and that it is unlikely that I would ever like anything in it, because that was one of the worst shows I've ever made myself watch a few hours of in a futile attempt to like it. It was despicably awful. On the other hand, a different friend also coincidentally sent me a funny clip from some other, much older anime called Sailor Moon, and I thought it seemed hilariously stupid a la Dragon Ball (which, while I don't love, I at least can enjoy to a degree because of how silly but sort of likably dumb it is). I've watched a few episodes now, and I'm not going to lie: it not only delivered on how stupid I expected it to be, but actually vastly exceeded it. Big thumbs up from me, I'll almost definitely finish at least the first season.

I've been both busy as well as sick for the past few weeks, and I had unrelatedly been planning on cutting down on any kind of social communication with the outside world as we approached the election anyways. I really only popped on to post about a couple of the movies I'd seen recently. To be honest, I've also recently come to the realization that a number of the people I used to share interests with and enjoy conversing things about on here have unfortunately either departed or at very least seemingly become less active as I have, which has made me less eager to get back on here again even after the election is over. These forums are supposed to be an enjoyable meeting of minds, a diversion from real life, and I guess I just haven't been finding them to be a positive one for a while now. And so, an iconic quote from War Games comes to mind..: @Malcador It's not an actress, but rather a high school photo of Ruth Bader Ginsburg that I saw and started using from when she passed last month.