Bartimaeus

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/mar/02/texas-polling-sites-closures-voting Good old voter suppression.

That's bad news for Bernie. Both Biden and Warren can probably now figure to get above 15% in California, which will hurt Bernie a lot.

what am I doing with my life lmao

Problem with that is that Bernie has earned the most money through this primary season by a bit, and with an utterly ludicrous amount of individual donors - which you would think would translate to turnout and votes, but...hasn't really? The youth turnout has been right about the same or even a little lower than usual. Biden, in comparison, hasn't even had any money to advertise or organize a ground game in Super Tuesday states while Sanders has been hammering most of them with both. Still not really translating to votes, though.

For as much as Bernie swears by and leans on support from youth, they've still been such an incredibly inconsistent and weak voter bloc this primary and last - the bulk of the blame will fall on them for not turning out if he does not win. They all spit rage at Trump and then complain that Democrats like Biden and Buttigieg are hardly better, and then don't bother to show up for the guy whom they overwhelmingly apparently love come primary day.

To be fair, that's 3 attempts now with the first two having ended almost immediately, so not as meaningful as it sounds. We're definitely headed for a brokered convention at this rate, though - looking like an awfully polarized Democratic electorate...

It's probably the closest thing for those of us that haven't played Divinity but have had the [mis]fortune of playing Dragon Age.

Being a superfan of the BG series, I knew that there was no reason to be interested, since these reboots/revivals never go well for the superfans who like how the old games played. It's basically what I expected, though I'm a bit more horrified with the up-close shots of characters than I expected to be. Yikes. That one dude, Gale, looks like he could've actually been modeled after a BG-style portrait...and that is not a compliment in any sense.

Thought it was lumpia at first, until I realized that it was all meat, .

What you said is exactly why he's my preferred candidate. I am not near knowledgeable (or probably smart) enough to know whether his exact plans would work, but Bernie consistently hits on the issues that I think are important, and he does it with obvious passion and conviction - you know these issues are obviously important to him, he's not saying stuff just because he thinks it'll be popular with the particular crowd he has at any given moment*. I think being the type of candidate that talks about those things, and talks directly about them is probably the more important bit of motivating the other powers that be to actually do something about it, even if it's not in the exact way that the candidate envisioned (see: Obamacare). Considering the candidacy of someone like Buttigieg makes me want to shoot myself in comparison: the man is completely devoid of passion and speaks in endless generalities and empty platitudes - when he decides to address anything in particular at all, that is. Bernie might not have the details ironed out, and it's quite possible that for some things he won't ever, but at least his mind is obviously occupied by the important matters and exactly where he'd like to see them go. *The closest he's gotten to this is probably gun control, which he is notably weaker on than other Democratic candidates, which you'd think is especially odd for a self-described "socialist". I consider that a feature, though, not a bug, since his approach to guns is more nuanced than other candidates, and I am not really totally for gun control to begin with. He has tried to straddle the line there as best as he can.

https://earthsky.org/space/new-natural-temporary-moon-for-earth-2020-cd3 Earth has a new mini-moon or "moonlet", a small asteroid that was captured into the Earth's orbit 3 years ago. (...Note: it's really, really, tiny, but since it is a natural body and has apparently been captured by the Earth, it technically qualifies as a moon, as there isn't really a size minimum for a moon).

Virtually none of his grand domestic policies would pass even a 51-49-controlled Democratic Congress anyways, so does it really matter? Has any president's pre-election plans mattered in recent history? Obama got Obamacare, Trump got his tax breaks...that's about all I can think of. There's probably more, but honestly, I'm really not that concerned. Well, I am concerned about the deficit's growth on a long-term basis, but no president will ever willingly deal with it because it'd be too unpopular to do so...so everyone will go on ignoring it.

Nope, no good in New Zealand. How silly. Don't have a server for India, so I can't say for that. (e): Doesn't work in Australia, either. What's going on down there, guys?

Virtually every cooked meal I have has some kind of spicy element in it, so I can't disagree with the general thought there, .

Haha, yeah, I wouldn't buy something like this. I like spicy food and eat peppers every day (mostly jalapenos as well, simply because they have my favorite flavor and they're cheap and plentiful), but I'm not out there eating ghost peppers or reapers or anything like that normally. This was solidly hot, but I wasn't like dying or anything.

https://www.amazon.com/Creeping-Ghost-Carolina-Reaper-Jerky/dp/B07CX97KZY/ I was gifted and ate a bag of this today. Pretty good flavor actually, though not as hot as I expected - which other people mentioned in the reviews as well.

^lmao

If it came down to Trump and Bloomberg, I would so, so very reluctantly vote for Bloomberg, and I'd hate myself doing it. I won't be happy with most of the Democratic field, but I would gladly vote for all of them with the exception for Bloomberg. At that point, I guess I'd have to accept that our democracy is fundamentally broken and that nothing really matters, but I might as well vote for the candidate that might ensure a small measure of balance in the Supreme Court because there's smaller and smaller chance RBG will make it another 4 years.

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/02/16/nevada-avoid-iowa-caucus-mess-115437 Nevada caucus volunteers fear another Iowa disaster, possibly worse, due to rushed preparations, lack of security, and...attempting to have everyone input all the results via iPads to a Google spreadsheet all at once. Have caucuses always been this been and we just didn't know about it due to lack of transparency (the Sanders campaign pushed heavily for caucus transparency after multiple debacles back in 2016, especially IIRC after Nevada changed how it awarded delegates after everyone had voted in order to make Hillary the winner), or is this a recent trend?

I watched like...the first season and a half of BCS? Enjoyed it, but never picked it back up again. My attention span for dark, serious dramas is pretty low, and I was initially under the impression the show was going to be more fun and silly than Breaking Bad, which is why I stuck with it longer than I did Breaking Bad. I remember thinking Kim was my favorite character, though.

-Every Star Trek fan the last decade, . "Creator / executive producer Alex Kurtzman is in the firing line." I know he's an infamously terrible writer, but yikes, we're still doing the firing squads thing? Really? ...Well, maybe it's for the best after all - can't ruin anything else that way, .

Yeah, it sounds fun, but having actually administrated forums before, it's usually pretty easy to find out when someone's doing that through a couple different measures (although I'm unsure if this forum software provides any more than the more basic and unclear one, which is by IP). The other one I like to check can be spoofed/changed, too, but it's not typically something anybody would know about to do.

everyone's gonna be awfully upset with me when I reveal that I've been arguing with and belittling my own alts all along for shoots and googles oops did I say that out loud

I do, but people unfortunately keep responding to and quoting you...as if you're people. Hopefully that changes with time, as my browser script is unfortunately not equipped to void such occurrences. No doubt, but some of us have noticed that the exact same kind of poster, with the same exact mannerisms, somehow keeps popping up with a new account every time the last one mysteriously goes MIA. It's getting old...and again, it doesn't really matter whether one's an alt or not - if you have a bunch of different posters all going "yep, they're that garbage tier alt again alright", and that person actually ISN'T an alt, they should probably heed the warning and maybe reflect upon and modify their posting a little. Predictably with such people or characters, no such luck here.