Bartimaeus

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.

what the heck was that lol Glad you're enjoying it. Poor Jadeite, though: some of the villains in Sailor Moon get a pretty raw deal, to be honest. It's a shame that real life evil people don't usually backstab each other as much as fictitious villains do, . Early on into season 1, I was actually getting kind of horrified (and amused) by Sailor Moon's body count - she kills like 15 women throughout the first half of the season! Specifically women, too - I don't think she ever directly kills a guy ever.

Guys, if it is at all possible, when you respond to characters as above, could you please use an @(name) instead of quoting them? I really don't enjoy accidentally reading characters' posts, I have this whole ignore list + uBlock Origin filter thing going for a reason, and...well, wait, maybe I can figure out a way to get uBlock to filter out even just quotes. Oh yeah, look at that, that's a beauty - automatically strips posts of quotes from certain characters as if they don't exist. This is the life, I tell you.

Speaking of Pence: Mike Pence suggests the Trump administration will be in place for four more years despite Biden victory: 'That's the plan'

That's a relief for Cowboy Bebop. I've tried to like Firefly a number of times, but there's just something...unlikable about the series for me. Ooh, that actually sounds good for One Punch Man and increases my interest in it. I knew there were...odd things about it that made it different, but I didn't remember the specifics. Jojo's Bizarre Adventure...okay, so I'll be the first to admit that one of the biggest problems I have with anime (and media in general) is that I'm really, really particular about art styles. I don't know why I'm so fussy about it, but it unfortunately plays a huge part in the way I perceive games, shows, movies, and stuff. And so the biggest problem with me even wanting to give Jojo a try is, oh my lord, that is one of the ugliest 2D anime styles I've ever seen in my entire life, I don't know if I can hack it. Sailor Moon just about hit the mark perfectly for me for art style with its particular aesthetic (especially as minimalistic as it was - and whatever couple of things I didn't like, mostly character design stuff, I got over pretty quickly and grew to appreciate because I liked the rest of the show so much). It's a way in which I am unfortunately shallow - it's a big part of why I am like 99.9% uninterested in triple A gaming right now, because I find the current 3D art styles to be horrifically ugly and off-putting, and I just...can't do it. Cartoons are no exception to this, and is a big part of why I'll probably never be *that* into anime. So Jojo is one that, okay, I'll eventually give it a try, but I am certainly in no hurry to do so because of a number of factors that I know are going to make it so difficult for me to get into it. Devilman Crybaby looks freaking weird, my man...but being short and sweet is always a huge plus for me and makes it easier to give it a chance, so I'll put it on the list. (e): "on the other hand waking up to find the only person alive is Shinji is probably a big downer" she's the one that should've been strangling him smh

That entire sequence was, uh, weird. I wasn't sure if I was going to watch Rebuild of Evangelion (something about remaking a series like this always seems unnecessary and weird to me), but I'll definitely wait until it's all out before deciding. Hope you enjoy it. I wasn't sold for the first few episodes, but started loving it after the first handful. Childhood memories are a fragile thing, and a lot of stuff just doesn't hold up...but some things prove to be an exception. Probably not - I'm picky enough about art styles and characters and...most everything else that I'm probably unlikely to adventure too far from picking and choosing particular stuff from the "consensus" great stuff. The only other three anime shows (not movies) I really have any kind of interest at this point, and I've looked into lists of a couple hundred at this point, are Cowboy Bebop (which I don't expect to particularly like especially after hearing a comparison of it to Firefly), Paranoia Agent (Satoshi Kon), and...maybe One Punch Man (which I also think there's a high probability I won't like due to it being male action-y/superhero-y, but which I've been recommended repeatedly over the years). We'll see what happens.

Finished season 1 of Sailor Moon. Loved it, though I thought it started dragging towards the very end as there were just a few too many "serious mode" episodes in a row and not enough ludicrous nonsense (and also seeing literally everybody except Sailor Moon herself get horribly maimed and killed one by one was a bit of a bummer, even though I knew things would likely eventually work out - if not by the end of the season, then probably by the beginning of season 2). Worried that the next season won't have the necessary amount of ludicrous nonsense that I require. After all, the ludicrous nonsense is the key to everything. Absolutely a keeper, and I'd wager that the show has a lot of rewatch value. I also watched all of Neon Genesis Evangelion and The End of Evangelion. Uh. Well, there were a number of things I liked...and a number of things I didn't. Kind of a frustrating show, and also, I was confused as hell by the story and had to look up piles of stuff on the wiki to figure out what the heck was going on after I finished it and even the wiki sometimes didn't know. My impression was still...mostly positive, I think? Asuka and Rei were the stars of the show (and although both of their voice actors were kind of goofy, I thought they fit them very well and grew to like them a lot), while I wavered between being ambivalent towards and disliking Shinji, the protagonist, for most of the series, up until The End of Evangelion, where I started to openly despise him. More evidence that I don't do well with particular kinds of male protagonists (i.e. most). I'm not really a big themes guy, but this show had some interesting ones that have have resonated and stuck in my brain since watching this, so good job to it on that front. Weirdly, I think I preferred the more abrupt, less-explained ending of the original show rather than The End of Evangelion's ending...which was less abrupt, but just as bizarre (if not more so) and not clear in meaning. Still not totally sure how I feel about this show, honestly...and there's a good possibility I might not ever.

Biden now up by about 0.75% in Pennsylvania, or a little over 50k votes. 0.5% is the margin for an automatic recount. Biden now up to a 14k margin in Georgia as well, and Arizona looks increasingly likely it'll stick to Biden as Trump misses the marks he needs as well as votes left to count. Courts have been throwing Trump's frivolous lawsuits left and right. 306 looking like Biden's number - the same "landslide" win Trump had back in 2016 (ignore that 20k votes decided Wisconsin, ~15k Georgia, and maybe 10k Arizona this election; and 11k Michigan, 20k Wisconsin, and 40k Pennsylvania in 2016).