Bartimaeus

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.

The alternative is that there are multiple people who act like utter lunatics, constantly contradicting themselves while frequently making absurd assertions like "I am a hardcore leftist [...] that hates leftists [...] that loves Russia." Gee, I can't imagine why people aren't treating you seriously. Really, it doesn't really matter if you're not called a troll/alt, because you'll be treated just as seriously when people think of you as a complete nutjob. So pick your poison, as it were...or, if you're an actual person instead of some guy wasting all our collective times playing a character, put a little effort into making a lick of sense.

You are correct - I had to actually go look up the stupid controversy on Wikipedia because apparently I had forgotten. Edited the post.

That's like the Twilight Zone version of my grandparents disagreeing over something. If it were them, there'd have been lots of name-calling, "I don't want to get into it"s, "I didn't say"s, and "I told you so"s. They've been together for sixty years, and from what I can tell, they've been fighting for every minute of it. Glad to hear your marriage is a little more happy, .

Disgraced lawyer Michael Avenatti found guilty in Nike extortion trial Anybody remember when this piece of crap was mulling a presidential run off of the good publicity of Trump's prostitution affair scandal? (e): fixed 'cos of what KaineParker said below

If nothing else, it's such an obvious and pathetically desperate attempt at distortion that it makes it obvious to everyone in here what Sharp_One really is, .

An administration, whether this one or the last, imposing its will in ways that are unpopular with >=60% of the population should receive a serious civil response - but a combination of cheering for one's own team, being used to and apathetic to or overwhelmed by it, being afraid of potential consequences, or being too busy to do anything about it has apparently robbed most of us of our voices. We are indeed getting the kakistocracy we deserve. It's not any one person's fault as to how we got to this point, but ultimately we collectively did vote these jokers in.

It looks like we're headed straight for a brokered convention, between these random rises and falls and Bernie unable to strengthen his coalition leading to no-one (important) wanting to drop out. Still early, so something could change, but it's not looking good.

Seems like it has both good critic and audience scores (80s for both), so that might actually be kind of a shame (although not necessarily or probably even likely related to sexism).

The only two movies I've had a chance to watch in like the past two months have been When the Wind Blows and the Bee Movie. It hasn't been a great two months. Might as well make Parasite the next, especially seeing as I know absolutely nothing about it.

New Hampshire Primary Polls: Voters Would Rather a Giant Meteor Kill Humankind Than See Trump Re-elected lmao, Trump's bad, but he's not "let's destroy the world" bad, New Hampshire! Even when sports fans say "I hope a meteor hits the stadium than either teams win!", they aren't including the rest of the world in it...

me still waiting for iowa to officially declare a winner apparently it's supposed to come monday after they correct the est. 100 precinct errors

I'm not sure how many people were calling or desiring for him to be shot in the street, but the criteria for "decent Republican to a Democrat" has certainly shifted from years ago. Less about "on what issues does this Republican not follow their party line and how does that actually translate to votes" (there was, after all, once upon a time Democrats liked and supported moderates such as Susan Collins to a degree) and more "can this Republican do anything publicly of any substance whatsoever to suggest they aren't in the golden cow cult like the rest"? As far as senators and representatives go, only McCain, Romney, and Amash have earned any distinction there (that I'm aware of anyways).

Yeah, I'd prefer to attribute it to stupidity and incompetency rather cheating, but the amount of weird stuff has been insane. Hire a group of nobodies that are connected to Pete Buttigeg to make an app that doesn't work even a little bit, then release a batch of votes that just barely suggests suggest that he'll win, then slowly release the rest of the votes over the next few days showing them to be about evenly distributed until you get to the very last 10% which coincidentally went strongly in favor of Sanders. That's not even mentioning the people keeping track of where the votes are coming in and noticing voting errors that keep going against Sanders. The entire thing about Iowa is the media boost (case in point, Buttigieg has now received a huge polling boost in New Hampshire). What the hell, Iowa? (e): On an unrelated note, it is startling to realize how different the GOP is today than it was when Obama was elected president - maybe not necessarily in terms of policy, but certainly in loyalties. Both McCain and Romney are despised by what is now the core GOP voter base for "treasonous" acts against their king...they were, probably not coincidentally, the GOP's two previous presidential nominees.