Bartimaeus

Officially hung.

Right now it looks like Labor will form a coalition with the SNP and Corbyn will be PM. At the very least Labor picked up more seats than they had previously, and this is with the media ****ting on Corbyn for the past two years and his own party stabbing him in the back. Tories truly dun goofed. I don't know if it means anything, but the Sky News news anchors seem to think the Conservatives making a coalition is more likely (although everyone seems to think Theresa May will resign regardless...which will mean an unelected PM, unless another election is immediately called for?), but you know, I don't know much about UK politics or if they're right.

Yeah, that's my head canon, too.

One of the most interesting things Comey said today, I think, was why he didn't want to announce to the public that Trump was not personally under investigation by the FBI. It was twofold: one, because he felt it would create a duty to correct, or retract, that statement later further down the line if it changed, which he must've considered at least a possibility for it to give him that much pause. Two, it ties back to the Clinton email case: after the appearance of impropriety reached such a high and ridiculous level in the Clinton case, and specifically after Clinton met privately in suspicious circumstances with Obama's attorney general, he felt a duty to set the record straight for the public, as it were, regarding the investigation. Days before the election, he was given new evidence for the Clinton case that required the reopening of the Clinton case, which, after telling the public that the investigation was over, he felt the need to correct when that status changed. That little mistake quite possibly tipped the scales in Trump's favor just enough that he won the election, though it's impossible to say for certain. He was loath to make the same kind of mistake with Trump, it appears, and for good reason, I think. And to think, all Clinton and her campaign had to do was keep their noses clean and stay clear of the investigation, and he probably would've never felt the need to make that announcement to begin with, and we might've never had a Trump presidency at all. Gosh dang all of you: Hillary Clinton, your garbage campaign, and the idiotic and corrupt Democrat party and election committee.

It actually does end, when the Abyss was sent hurtling to the bottom of the planes in...4th or 5th edition*, I think. That's right about the time I stopped giving a crap about D&D. *Yep, I looked it up just now: it's 4th edition, and I got it a little wrong: it's sent into the middle of the planes (the Inner Planes, specifically), underneath the elemental planes among a couple of other things like Limbo, where apparently the tanar'ri are more or less trapped. Kind of lame, if you ask me. The Blood War was such a big, and, in my opinion, rather interesting feature of planar warfare...gave the overall D&D setting a bit of an interesting twist compared to the typical "forces of good vs. forces of evil" shtick that everything else does.

From what I'm reading online, what you said is not quite correct, kensu. Lemures (and other fiends) are actually ex-petitioners who have sold their souls to become fiends themselves, perhaps (but not necessarily) to avoid a worse judgement (such as being determined to be False or Faithless). So, lemures are generally just the lowest/weakest manifestation of these petitioners-turned-demons, although those selling their souls do not necessarily always become lemures, and may become something stronger if they were once powerful. However, I am reading from third party sources here, which may not be correct...but it seems as though from everywhere I'm reading, lemures are definitely a specific type of fiend, and not some other spiritual manifestation. So to get back to algroth's original question...uh, I'm not sure what the answer would be. I'm not sure if there's an "original" "subset" of fiends, so to speak, that were the first fiends, or if they were ALL originally mortals and the most powerful of them have just been slowly growing stronger over time, or what. (e): I'm also a little confused on the matter of other immortals, then. Can other immortal races, like celestials, convert petitioners to become members of their own race? If not, how in the world do the celestials over hold back the forces of Hell and the Abyss after the Blood War ends, as their forces grow ever-stronger? Perhaps petitioners can become these immortal races depending on their alignment - chaotic evil petitioners to the Abyss, lawful evil to Hell, lawful good to celestials (or something), etc.? Or do these other types of immortal races just reproduce in a more normal fashion instead? I'm not really sure...

In other news, it looks like the conservatives in the UK may be in for a big loss tonight after calling for a snap election. Originally projected to win somewhere around 40-50 seats, they're now projected to lose about 20-15, which would cost them their majority, likely leading to another election. Will have to see how that turns out...

From the concerned looks of his colleagues, I think I have to agree with Gromnir: that didn't seem like his usual self. Hopefully he wasn't having a mini-stroke or something, but it would explain his behavior.

If you're saying that to me, then the reasons I dislike ESPN as a network have nothing to do with the guy's prior termination. Everything to do with them leading the way of tabloid levels of journalism in the sports sphere, and continuing to double-down on it even as their subscription numbers sink. And then you let half of your reporter and insider crew, guys with actual speaking/writing abilities and connections that can come up with legitimate stories, while saying morons like Bayless and Smith are good for ratings...

Par for the course for ESPN, it seems. Every time they're presented with a decision to make, it seems like they virtually always make the wrong one. The more people that cord-cut and sink that network, the better, methinks... Too bad it's owned by Disney and has little chance of ever truly (spectacularly) failing.

Comey's prepared opening testimony for tomorrow: https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/documents/os-jcomey-060817.pdf The Guardian's summary. CNN's summary. Independent's summary. Take your pick.

Thanks for the links. I liked the Jimmy Cliff song. I'm still listening to the Van der Graaf Generator song, and it seems O.K., too...but I didn't care much for the others, sadly, .

They're annoying. It's like they're there just to make me think I haven't completed a game when I would otherwise be perfectly satisfied with what I've done. Even worse, achievements are usually a combination of "do just basic completion things throughout the game", "do interesting/difficult to perform things", and "do insanely tedious and dull things that take forever/way too many tries". It'd be nice if games made up their mind as to what they wanted achievements to be instead of this hodgepodge of random things.

I tried to see if I could find ANY reggae music that I liked. Enter "Mournful Skunk", a self-described "solo gloomy reggae project". I gotta be honest guys, I'm not sure that this should really count as reggae. Nevertheless, after listening to parts of like 20 different apparently reggae songs, it's my favorite one...probably because it doesn't sound too much like reggae to begin with. Some of the other songs admittedly sound more like reggae, though, and aren't too bad either.

The most gracious way I could describe listening to that would be that it was "inoffensive". A big "bleh" from me,

Speaking of, I wish you could disable achievements entirely on Steam...

(e): apparently I don't like reggae. sorry shady, apparently? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Kf4p738j80

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Veto power over new federal laws is quite significant power, although Germany's presidents usually use it only to prevent laws that they think are in violation of constitution and it has been only used eight times total by all the presidents I think. Good to know. Is the president usually of the same party/extremely cooperative with the Prime Minister, or is not too infrequent that they're from a different party? What would it take to override said veto? (e): Article with more information on it. Apparently, the president is not really supposed to have the right to veto a bill, per se, but nevertheless does technically have it, and according to the wording, the only circumstances where it's maybe supposed to happen is where they feel it goes against the Constitution, as you said. Interesting and odd. That power would probably be used and abused to its limit here in the U.S. if we had a presidency-PM system like that, and if they were from different parties.

Yeah. I was talking more the scope of importance and responsibilities. The position is just not very important in of itself, and it usually doesn't matter who's currently sitting there - if it's a Republican presidency, then the fact that it's any other Republican is usually good enough, and the same for Democrats*. The three most important things about the VP is the effect it has upon your election chances, providing a clear successor in the case of tragedy, and their influence/power in the Senate. Nobody really thinks much of the VP until they actually do something - for example, tiebreaking a vote. Biden didn't tiebreak a single vote during his entire time as VP...but apparently, Pence has already done 3? *We should really go back to the old days of having a VP (and some cabinet members) from the opposite party instead of the "kick out everyone regardless of how competent they were and stick in your own cronies" system that we've been stuck with for a while now. Mueller, the former FBI director currently investigating Trump, is one of the few exceptions I can think of where the new president didn't immediately oust a prior administration guy when the the first opportunity came: Obama asked him to stay on after his term expired, which he did for two years. I guess the FBI position is a little different than others, though, and there's probably more examples of that sort of thing out there.

She does. The presidency there is more or less ceremonial. I think they have some miscellaneous responsibilities and powers, but really... (e): The easiest analogue would probably be VP of the U.S.

Yeah, I wanted to be mad at WoD's "I know you are but what I am", but Gorgon was pretty much asking for it.

I actually think it's more likely he has an early form of dementia. If you go back 20 years and see how he talked then, he's much more of a lucid, clear-spoken, and intelligent speaker. I wouldn't say he's quite a totally different person, but it's at least possible to follow and understand him. Nowadays, the majority of what he says is just endless nonsense or platitudes that you can only get the very basic gist of - anything more than that you're going to have to really construct yourself for him. IIRC, he's the oldest president ever elected and he's lead a pretty horrendously unhealthy life-style*, so I guess it wouldn't be that much of a surprise if that were the case. But to answer your question, I would say it's "not good". *This is the guy that believes that everyone has a "finite amount of energy", after all, and that your body breaks down once you start to run out of it so exercising is obviously terrible for you.

"Top Secret NSA Report Details Russian Hacking Effort Days Before 2016 Election" https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Sbo500AyldgJ:https://theintercept.com/2017/06/05/top-secret-nsa-report-details-russian-hacking-effort-days-before-2016-election/+&cd=4&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us Apparently, the lady who leaked this was arrested about an hour after it was leaked. (e): Also, in other news, CSPAN, FOX, CNN, CBS, ABC, and NBC will all be airing the Comey testimony live this Thursday.

Trying to get an understanding of how areas of effect work in Baldur's Gate. What I'm learning from the vanilla spells is that every time the spell description says it's a 30 foot radius, it's a 30 foot radius. Every time it says a 20 foot radius, it's actually a 30 foot radius. If it says it's a 10 foot radius, it's also a 30 foot radius. If it's a 3 foot radius, it's actually, yes, you guessed it, a 30 foot radius. If, on other hand, it's a 5 foot radius, it might just be...a 7.5 foot radius. I don't know much about how areas of effect work from what I've seen so far, and from the looks of it, neither did BioWare when they made this game, regardless of what they were writing in the spell descriptions. All I was trying to do was to fix a spell whose area of effect I noticed was wrong...and all I figured out was that literally almost every spell that is supposed to be anything besides a 30 foot radius or just a single target is also wrong. Thanks, BioWare.