Bartimaeus

I feel like it wouldn't have changed that much: the biggest issue to voters this cycle is "the economy", and historically speaking, the incumbent party loses when that's the case, no matter if it's justified or not.

No, it does not: like the last election, when I was in here repeatedly calling for calm because things actually looked pretty good for Biden early on despite how nasty the initial tallies looked, I am looking at individual county level shifts to determine whether or not she is running behind or ahead of Biden, and it does not look great so far. It's not out of reach with Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin yet by any means, but the initial shifts do not favor her, especially in Pennsylvania: I will post again when things either look determinedly either grimmer or rosier. So far, North Carolina has been lost outside of some unforeseen hail mary (like different countries not dropping election day vs. early vote dumps in a consistent/predictable manner) - the margins are just too terrible.

The initial prognosis tonight looks poor for Kamala Harris. Still early, but looks poor.

"All pizzas have been prepared following the cooking instructions on the back of their packaging" I'm surprised any of them turned out alright, following the cooking instructions seems to pretty much always lead to terrible breads when baking pre-made doughs. The third guy was straight up like "c'mon, these all need to actually be cooked" at one point.

"Fun" video with the Gamers Nexus guy if you hadn't seen it: Windows (and most other always online products, services, and features) is adversarial, by design, and it is always getting worse. On the latest patched version of the official Windows 11 multi-installer from Microsoft.com (including Home and Pro editions, along with some others, IDK, I wasn't paying that much attention to the list of options you get, I just chose Pro), found and freely downloadable here: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows11 It is admittedly not straightforward to discern what you need to click on in order to not have to do the SHIFT+F10 OOBE stuff, but it is still possible: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/scl/fi/psttyrild3n998fzlhnx0/vmware_wFvbyAGVMu.mp4?rlkey=zi9bw7xlkiohwzzzjl4o8ookg&dl=0

What edition, specifically? IIRC, later updates of Windows 10 Home behaved similar as well, but I thought the Pro and Enterprise variants were unaffected.

You can't feasibly buy either the Enterprise or LTSC editions of Windows 10/11 (subscription-based volume licensing), but both of them sure are easy to obtain the official installers for and use without issue. Don't ask me how I know...or maybe do, depending on how interested you are, . It's pretty much the same situation as it was for most editions/versions of the Windows 10 installer: unplug/disable your internet as you start the installation process and when you get to creating an account, it'll try to make you connect, it won't work because you don't have internet and then you can say "nope, as you can see, I am a poor soul that doesn't have internet", Windows will go "very well, you filthy peasant", and now you can proceed with creating a local account. The whole presentation of Windows 11 feels like a MacOS facade that you have to immediately hammer and drill back into its proper shape before you can use it. Stupid.

It's overblown in the sense that It's just more stuff to disable. A disable is just a click away if you use Shut Up Windows... ...which I can't recommend enough alongside Winaero Tweaker for fixing and/or reverting a bunch of Windows 10/11 annoyances/intrusions.

I feel like there's untapped potential for reverse ragebaiting people into buying your game by getting everyone mad at how stupid the people talking about the game are. For Veilguard, you've already got one side effectively covered, so now you just need to manufacture some SJW ("social justice woker", of course) getting upset about how the game is in fact really anti-LGBT and made only for incels and white men, and I think you'll probably have manipulated just about everyone who cares into buying your game.

Anecdotal and I don't live in Michigan, but I personally know several people who are ardently pro-Israel and who I have repeatedly heard say that Palestine is little more than a terrorist state which has consistently burned bridges with just about every country that has ever tried to extend them an olive branch and which no other country in the world would ever put up with if they were right on their doorstep. They are currently content with Harris' fence-walking on the issue and will be voting for her, at least for this cycle in order to defeat Trump, so I will once again personally affirm what Zoraptor has said multiple times this year in that it's really a no-win issue for Biden/Harris and that basically being non-committal does seem likely (though perhaps not certain) to be the best approach to try to capture as many votes in the face of Donald Trump's "we're going to finally let Israel put this to rest" stance, weak-willed and lacking moral fiber it may be. Polling on the issue seems to suggest that older Democratic-leaning voters still support Israel over Palestine, while the younger Democratic-leaning voters, uh, don't, so it just doesn't seem to be something that Democrats can even bring up (much less try to address) without it immediately biting them in the butt, especially seeing as the politicians themselves seem to be divided on the issue. There's also the issue of younger voters barely showing up to vote for any level of government in the first place: if they want their beliefs to inform policy, they would need to actually start consistently showing up, which election after election (be it presidential or midterms), they really just don't. Of course, you could also say the inverse, that politicians should be pro-active in trying to win younger voters over with policies suited towards them specifically, which could make them more reliable...but I already saw how that went for Bernie Sanders in both 2016 and 2020, so I don't think that strategy is going to work.

Pretty similar story for me: spent maybe five or six hours with the game, beat it once, was fine with that, didn't really want to play it anymore...go look online that you have to beat it a few dozen more times or whatever to actually beat it, thought "that's nice, I already played and 100%ed the Binding of Isaac years ago", immediately uninstalled it. Into the trash it goes.

Some co-workers bought a box of different organic peppers ripe from the end of growing season for me, since I'm the "spicy food" guy (I'm not really that much of a hothead, but I do cook with and eat stuff like bird's eye, habaneros, and scotch bonnets, don't usually go much higher than stuff like that). I wasn't sure what would actually be in the box or how hot the peppers would be, and I ended up eating this lumpy and misshapen pale pepper called a "jay's peach ghost scorpion". Suffice to say, I suddenly remembered why I normally stick with the peppers that I do.

This is what I wrote out in Notepad++ before looking at the answer: I sort of remember how to do 6th grade (ages 11-12) algebra, which I guess qualifies you as a kind of genius compared to most YouTube commenters, . Just using the inverse fraction (i.e. 4/3) is an admittedly much smarter and more efficient way to get there that I should've also thought of, but hey, at least I eventually got there!

That's how I initially read it and I was like "he's not dead, why does everyone always think he's dead?", but then I realized Azdeus meant the C&C series.

7800X3D: The beatings will continue until morale improves. The prices will continue to get higher until Intel improves.

Assuming it's not close and that Trump wins. Could be a bit longer to settle some states like Nevada (who count incredibly slowly) if it's really close, and if Trump loses, there'll be least weeks of shenanigans - at a minimum - to come. Of course, it'll be a lot less concerning this time around, since he's not already in office, so probably a lot easier to tune it out unless it turns into violent insurrection again. From what I remember, when Democrats achieved a state trifecta in Michigan within the past couple of years, they changed their voting laws to allow pre-election day tabulation of absentee/early votes, so Michigan should in theory be known on election night. If Harris loses Michigan (or conversely, if Trump inexplicably loses Florida, another state that counts quickly), we'll know who's won on election night, since there's not really a path for Harris to win without Michigan (nor Trump without Florida...or more likely, North Carolina, but I don't know offhand whether North Carolina tabulates all of its votes quickly or not - I feel like it doesn't, but I don't know for sure). Early voting of states like Pennsylvania point to another election with a big early vs. election day split between the two parties, so everyone should prepare themselves for Red Mirage 2: Electric Boogaloo. I remember being (I think) the primary person on here four years ago cheering up everyone else who was dooming on election night that Biden was actually doing just fine despite how horrific the election day results looked, and kept repeating over the next day or two that Biden was probably even favored to win despite still being behind in most of the deciding states. It will likely happen again with most of the same problem child states that have stupid vote tabulation laws, so be prepared for lots of early doom and gloom and it getting dragged out for as long as possible. Of the toss-up/swing states this cycle (Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Nevada, Georgia, North Carolina, and maybe Nebraska 2 - there hasn't really been much quality polling of Nebraska 2 to determine whether or not it's in play for Trump or not, so let's not count our money early just because everyone seems to think it'll easily go blue), if Kamala wins Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin (the traditional Blue Wall states that Trump managed to win by a hair that Biden was able to just barely claw back in 2020), and Nebraska 2, she has won the election.

Shoplifters (2018). An impoverished and too big family with questionable morals live in a small shack of a home while taking in a 5 year old girl that is being neglected by her parents. It's the very first live-action Japanese film I can say that I liked without any reservations, with some very interesting ideas on family and being socially isolated from the rest of the world even as it lives all around you. The film apparently won a lot of awards domestically, and I can appreciate why.

Was also trying to rescue a spider out of a bath tub once, accidentally killed it instead. Felt terrible, it did the death curl and everything. Left it on the piece of paper I was trying to rescue it with, checked back an hour later...yep, still very much dead. I started to move the paper and then it suddenly sprang back to life and wandered off. That little rat bastard made me feel terrible for a whole hour. I mean, I probably still hurt or scared it (I read online later that spiders doing a false "death curl" can sometimes just be a stress and/or self-protection thing, basically trying to cover their body with their legs to protect themselves as much as possible), so I guess I deserved it. I saved a fly a few weeks back. It was desperately trying to phase through a window, and I grabbed the fly swatter and took aim and...I don't know, I just couldn't do it for some reason. A fly. It must've been because it seemed like it just wanted to get out, and I could oblige it instead of smashing its guts all over a window. So I grabbed a cup and a piece of paper and it strangely let me catch it easily, which seemed very at odds with it frantically trying to get through the window. I put it outside...it's what it wanted, and after all, only spiders are allowed to roam through my domain freely.

The Shape of Water (2017) by Guillermo del Toro. (poster would go here, but literally every single copy of it that I can find online looks like mashed jpegos) It was a cute romantic comedy. Well, it's not exactly a romantic comedy...but the fun parts were. The rest of the movie was just kind of there. Guillermo del Toro's films never really fully convince me, but at least there was enough to enjoy here. I think it's the fantastical tone, the perhaps even childish writing in its caricatures and cliches...intersected with also being very dark and brutal. I'd say I'd like to see him try his hand at an animated film because I feel like his style would work better for that medium, but uh, his Pinocchio film was my least favorite thing that I've seen from his so far, so maybe not. That might be more an issue of the specific material than the general idea, though.

My understanding of Dark Souls is that the flow of time is not really, er...linear? Insofar as characters from different times and places pop in and out of existence as you go along your quest, which is also kind of handwavey for the player connecting with other players to go through areas and see characters or defeat bosses which they may have already defeated or interacted with. Like, I don't know that the player's tromping around of Anor Londo is really meant to represent what Anor Londo would look like hundreds of years after its fall or whatever...buuut I guess I don't know that it isn't, either. Also, on a side-note, I'm pretty sure the Warriors of Sunlight do not worship Gwyn but rather the disgraced and forgotten son (who, officially, actually turned out to be...someone else from Dark Souls 3, despite the fact that Dark Souls III would necessarily have to take place even later than the events of Dark Souls 1, so never mind Solaire and how old he might've been). I know people also liked to read into the placement of corpses of certain characters (e.g. Lautrec after you defeat him in his own world) and also how they like, instantly become ancient petrified corpses that seem like they must've always been there despite the fact that they weren't just moments ago, as if this also plays into the non-linear flow of time rather than the fact that making custom corpses for each important character would be wasted dev effort on a game where a hundred stationary dragon butts were copy and pasted in an otherwise empty giant lava pit. Maybe all that nonsense was actually a real thing deliberately designed that way, but I don't care: characters are what draw me to stories, but the motley crew of mostly passive and background-y characters a fully compelling world and story do not exactly make. The combination of jankiness and unfairness is a big part of the fun...but then again, one of my favorite things in DS1 PvP was invading someone and being faced with a team of three or four because they'd summoned gold and white spirits and had set themselves up specifically to murder invaders like me (and kept using the Dried Finger in order to draw more invaders in rather than suffer the usual ten or maybe fifteen minute invasion pause that would normally happen after you were invaded). The ensuing back alley knife fight to survive that ambush and take out the host using any means I could despite the long odds made it worth all the while. Or on the other extreme end of the spectrum, invading someone, realizing they're basically helpless, and just playing with them by trying to land a successful grab-and-kiss animation with the Dark Hand heavy attack before White Crystalling out... It doesn't even do any damage, it's just cute and funny. I suppose it does steal a Humanity if they've got any, but I usually dropped them a Soul of a Great Hero or something while I was doing an emote before leaving anyways. Yeah, I think I disabled my network adapter every time I played Dark Souls 2. I hated the movement in the game too much and just wanted it to be over with, getting randomly ganked by other players wasn't going to make it any better. Now I've been using simplewall for like five or six years on all of my personal Windows devices, which makes application and service white/blacklisting via Windows' built-in filtering only take like literally three or four seconds, so it would be super easy to just turn off Dark Souls' internet connectivity. Windows' default firewall controls are super tedious to deal with on an application-by-application basis, I'll never go back to it for my own devices when I just want most programs to automatically have their connectivity blocked (which simplewall enables you to do with a whitelist & notify system - you start up a program for the first time, simplewall automatically pops you a notification asking whether or not you want to add it to the whitelist, click yes or no, it'll remember your choice and not prompt you the next time, done...go into the UI and checkmark the box next to it if you change your mind; if for some reason you don't hit yes or no, it defaults to no, so everything is automatically blocked when you run it for the first time).

Another right-wing terrorist assassination attempt on Trump... Showed up armed to his rally in California, didn't get very far before being arrested. They might hate Trump, but they're still deranged morons, I suppose.

I've never had shrimp I don't like... Maybe shrimp I don't want quite as much of as other shrimp, but never shrimp that I'd turn my nose at wholesale. Does your family just not care that much for shrimp, or did you prepare them in a way that didn't agree with them?

I'm genuinely at a loss for what Professor Tomoe was trying to accomplish in season 3/S as well. Find the Pure Crystal Hearts...and...uh, something something, Hotaru turns into Black Lady, which he wants because...I don't even know? I think he was possessed by either demons or aliens that probably wanted to take over the world, because that's pretty much always the main plot outside of the filler arcs. Also, wait, not Black Lady, because Black Lady was Chibi-Usa's evil form... My knowledge of Sailor Moon's main story mostly revolves around remembering some of the minions and the stupid macguffins they were always after. I think Chibi-Usa and the baddies were after Usagi's Silver Crystal thingy in season 2, the Pure Heart Crystals (which probably lead to something else but who cares what) in season 3, and the...beautiful dreams in season 4? Which also probably lead to something else, but I have no idea what. Like, I remember the Amazoness Quartet turning against Nehellenia in SuperS, the cat lady (Roan, Koan?) & company turning against the phantom guy in R, or Naru losing her dream king guy...because those are things that actually happened and had character moments attached to their occurrences, but I have no idea what anyone was really trying to do. Except for Ail and An in the filler season 2 arc, I guess: they were just confused, because their demon tree from the netherworld apparently ran exclusively on love, trust, and good feelings, contrary to what you (and apparently they) would expect, so trying to feed it humans just wasn't really going to work out. Whoops.

I guess this is what I deserve for trying to be polite for the folk currently enjoying the show instead of going "this is the worst thing I've ever seen in my whole life" as would typically be more my style, so let me be a little more clear: I liked what I saw of Frieren a bit more than the first episode I saw of Dandadan, and I rather disliked Frieren. If it in any way proves helpful, here is a short and simple rating system of a number of modern anime shows I've seen thanks to some of the fine folk on the Obsidian forums: Season 1 of Spy x Family: 7/10 Vampire in the Garden: 6.5/10 Girls' Last Tour: 6.5/10 Season 1 of One Punch Man: 6/10 Season 1 of K-ON!: 5.5/10 Some episodes of Frieren: 4.5/10 Mostly fast-forwarded Devilman Crybaby: 4/10 Episode 1 of Dandadan: 3.5/10 Don't mistake me not acting a petulant bastard as feeling in any way positive towards something, some things just merit stronger words on my part more than others, .