Bartimaeus

Just seeing this. That was a...weird trailer. Definitely not what I expected.

Yeah, he'll be 9 years older than when Trump was elected. That's understandable. Makes the choice of VP very important if he wins the nomination, whereas with most younger candidates, most VP choices seem to be more a means to an end. There are so many candidates right now that I don't even want to start examining them individually. Will wait until we get closer to the primaries to see who's actually got realistic shots before I start bothering, I guess. So by default, I guess Bernie's still my favorite choice (with I THINK Elizabeth Warren as my second choice, but that's preliminary and totally ignorantly chosen as heck).

They can just come and take it from my corpse. No kidding. Pretty egregious. (e): I meant to add this on to my previous post, but now GD has already responded to me. One moment... @Bernie: That's fine and pretty expected. I prefer the focus of his policies more than most candidates (as he's historically mostly shyed away from the wedge issues like abortion and gun rights that I currently consider to be of the least importance in dealing with at this point in time, and focused more on the issues that I think are currently vitally important like wealth inequality, getting money out of politics, getting out of endless wars, etc.), even if all of the implementations for his ideas aren't always perfectly sound. On top of that, I generally like his personality and the way he does business in politics - generally. He's not perfect, not nearly, but uhh, yeah, one only has to look at literally everyone else to see that's always the case.

Any particular reason why? I'm currently unsure of how to feel about him as a 2020 candidate, but I'm thinking I still like him better than the likes of Klobuchar.

I'd give a slight nod to Kaepernick. He presumably got paid some amount of money as a result of the NFL either fearing losing the case or simply fear of it being dragged out and creating a big PR issue when they've already got other massive PR issues, and I think that's a win for him no matter which way you put it. The amount of money he got probably would hint at which scenario it was, but we're not privy to that. I would've preferred to see it dragged out, personally, and again, I don't know exactly what Kaepernick got out of it or whether his case had legitimacy to it, so that's why I'd only consider it a minor victory (at least in terms of his cause).

Same - I'm usually pretty good at recognizing faces, and I had to seriously look at him for a while to realize it was him. He looks...uh...different these days.

Many Patriots players are already saying they won't be going to the White House, but would like to meet President Obama. Oof! Didn't the NBA champs literally already do that this past year, too? They rejected the invitation, Trump "rescinded" it, then they did something with Obama.

it's not even that they didn't really play it, it's that they said they were going to, and then they only played two seconds of it to then immediately jump to the worst hottest garbage in the world, on top of it being the lowest scoring super bowl in history and the evil empire winning once again 9/11 was an inside job, etc.

unrelated to draft: /r/bikinibottomtwitter: "It's no Superbowl, but they played this at the Dallas Stars hockey game": https://www.reddit.com/r/BikiniBottomTwitter/comments/amz9ej/its_no_superbowl_but_they_played_this_at_the/ this stupid dumb thing is all I wanted, but no there's precious few joys in life left except children's cartoons, folks, and the NFL will tease and lie to us but won't even let us have that anymore

For playoff games that I don't want to see, I sometimes use a highly advanced strategic skill that I've spent many years developing that I like to call "taking a nap" before a game starts so I can just wake up near the end of the game or right after rather than sit through it. Sometimes, I'm pleasantly surprised - and sometimes I'm not. I have no regrets doing it for this year's Super Bowl - apparently, even Spongebob showing up was basically a scam, and I really think that would've just been too much for my little old young heart to handle.

Congressman (Republican) Walter Jones in hospice: https://www.witn.com/content/news/FIRST-ON-WITN-Congressman-Walter-Jones-in-hospice-504916912.html Known for being a genuine and principled moderate, he's pretty well considered even among progressives - a little bit of a unicorn in this day and age. Sad to hear, and best of luck to the man and his family.

Society? I thought we were talking about politics? Sorry to differ with you guys but he is done. The only thing that saves him is a SCOTUS fight if RBG steps down or another Hillary Clinton-esque candidacy. Had his opponent been literally any other democrat (with the exceptions of Warren, Sanders, Pelosi, or Schumer) he would not have won in '16. He was less loved than she was hated. As far as where is supports would go? Home. They stay home. I vote in every election but if there is no LP candidate for President I would skip that one. Or write my own name or Mickey Mouse's in. Put the black mouse in the White House in '20! Politics, society as a whole, both really. At this point, it seems like RBG will fight to literally her last breath than let Trump appoint another SCJ. We'll see how that turns out.

He's been a laughably pathetic manbaby his entire term - this might be a black eye, but who else is his base going to turn to? ...Of course, the reasons that I see him as a pathetic manbaby (see almost literally everything on his Twitter...sigh) aren't the same that his base might, so I guess I don't know for certain. The amount of machismo about him "caving" is really stupid, though - when did being able to compromise and admit you were wrong become completely synonymous with weakness in our society? It's such an awful attitude to have, for literally everybody. Not that anyone should be singing his praise or doing somersaults for very temporarily ending something he started over something so stupid (that he really should've been fighting his own party with two freaking years ago when they controlled the House - funny how it only became an issue the moment Democrats controlled it), but goodness gracious, the tribalism is getting so freaking insane.

As someone who leans more toward the left, Imma ask... Should we trust this source in the age where leftist extremists call themselves "unbiased" and manipulate statistics? My gut tells me don't believe everything I read. Esp if it's on the net and even moreso when it comes to politics. "Hello there fellow leftists. I am very left-wing. Just the most left-wing guy you can imagine. By the way, have you noticed how everybody on the left is an evil lying extremist?" P.S. Trump advisor Roger Stone was arrested by Mueller this morning.

Yeah, I find them supremely awful on the whole too, but I'm more or less at peace with it at this point. I do wish they were more avoidable in online/public discussion at times, but I'm sure large amounts of people wish some of the things I like were more avoidable, too.

Yeah, I wasn't responding to you - more on top of what Volourn was saying. In an ideal world, sure, the Saints would've already won and a single blown call wouldn't matter. But then I think of the 2009 Packers-Cardinals playoff game where Aaron Rodgers played some of the best football the world's ever seen for an entire game while his defense sucked dogbutt against Kurt Warner also going godmode, and they collectively have one of the best shootouts ever to happen in NFL history. Then they get into overtime, Rodgers gets blatantly facemasked and loses a fumble because of it, it's then run back for a TD and now the game has unceremoniously ended. It sucks as a fan, and I'm sure it sucks as a player, especially one of the offensive players who couldn't have realistically done anymore than they already did. So even though I wanted the Saints to lose, if they get that single blatant call, their winning percentage probably goes up to something like 99% and they almost certainly win, and it's crappy that it didn't. The whole thing about "should've already put away the game" is nice in theory, but in the most brutal of all modern sports (I think?), especially in the playoffs where literally every game is the end of your season if you don't win, it's just that: nice in theory.

Close, Minnesota. Yeah, it's partially up to the specific professor - some of them are not terrible people and don't require $200 new textbooks. Even then, sometimes a college will list a book as "required", then you actually get in the class and the professor tells you "don't buy the book, the school is making me list it, we won't need it". Which I mean...is better than nothing, but most people buy their books before the semester starts.

Have to agree with Volourn - they're equally as bad when their severity and importance are equal. Football is a game of inches, and if you give even a terrible team enough tries through phony penalties at an opponent's 1, even against an amazing defense, they're going to get it probably within a handful of tries at worst. Same way the other way around - even an amazing offense against a terrible defense can have their receivers illegally knocked over and tackled, and if it ain't called, there's not going to be much they can do about it. You're effectively playing different games at that point. In this case, the defender did not play or look for the ball, hit the receiver way before the ball arrived and made it effectively impossible to catch the ball, borderline illegally hit him when he a defenseless receiver, AND on top of it all, it was a helmet-to-helmet hit.

Depends on the state, depends on the college. Even a lot of community colleges around here cost upwards of 3 grand a semester to attend full time, and the "textbooks" come with mandatory CD keys to unlock online content that is a requirement to even be in the class (since professors will use that online platform to do all coursework, and you can't get on it without the CD key)...and those CD keys are only good when purchasing new, and new usually costs 120-200 per class.

I thought it was pretty good. It felt a tad rushed, like there should've been another story arc in between resolving the conflict with the Diamonds (since we were pretty much JUST introduced to White Diamond). From what I read, there was originally more planned in between, but because Cartoon Network wouldn't tell them whether they were going to be renewed for a sixth season, they decided to make sure to properly end it even if it was early rather than risk having no resolution.

Awful, terrible call, but it's hard for me not to be happy with the result at the same time. Still gross, though.

Unrelated:

WALL-E's my favorite Pixar movie, but I mostly just adore the robots (particularly WALL-E and EVE) in it and most of the other stuff is kind of whatever (which lends itself directly to what algroth said about post-Earth stuff). That's more of a personal taste thing, though. And yeah, I really don't like Up, but the beginning is fantastic. Some of us are man- or lady-babies who can still feel emotions, yes. The amount of times my eyes have started watering during even silly stuff like Steven Universe is, quite frankly, pretty embarrassing.