Bartimaeus

I agreed to that already - your original statement did not include the "opposing party" bit, which is what I was replying to with that: "the likelihood o' a Court Justice dying or becoming incapacitated during an election year is smallish."

Definitely small, but given that it's happened five times in the last hundred years or so (most recently under Reagan), it's probably likely to happen again...unless the SC gets more politicized than it is, and justices start resigning early in order to help pack the court - as of now, that doesn't seem to be the case, though, as justices seem to (wisely) hold themselves separate from any party or political leanings. It is pretty unlikely, though, that the Democrats will ever make them pay for it, that I'll agree to. It's actually more likely that they'll lose even more ground in the SC unless things hold as they are until around 2021, at the very earliest (...assuming a Democrat presidency). That's a lot to ask for of both Kennedy and especially Ginsberg, and, well, the odds are against it. If something like this were to happen again, it's probably most likely during the Trump/Pence presidency, actually, if the Dems manage to wrestle control of the Senate this upcoming election cycle: I could see them going full obstructionist with any new picks. An unfortunate sign for the state of our democracy if that ends up being the case...but hey, we were obviously already there before any such scenario. As for McConnell...that's the unfortunate truth, I suppose.

Yeah...that's not a good solution. These dummies never realize the simple fact that once you set a precedent...for example, stealing a supreme court justice...it often comes back to bite you in the butt later on, and devolves the state of politics even further than it already is. Set up this "committee" and you may well find yourself on the other end of that blade somewhere down the road. It's irrelevant, anyways, since it won't pass: if enough Republicans felt comfortable with this "committee" to vote for it, they'd just signal their support for impeachment to begin with, rendering it moot. Perhaps there should be a way of determining if a president is still sane, but having it be a political process - which it would be, as is obvious from any other Congressional committee - is not the way to go.

Dual-classing is pretty overpowered in BG, too. A fighter or swashbuckler (thief kit - you lose the ability to backstab, but get the THAC0 of a fighter and an AC bonus to go along with it, and you can specialize in weapons as well) dual-classing to a cleric or mage at level 7 or 8 makes them pretty good warriors for pretty much the rest of the game while still giving them the full benefit of spellcasting abilities...as opposed to multiclasses, where the only multiclass I would really seriously consider is a mage-cleric. Multiclasses with a fighter-type class are almost universally inferior to a good dual-class in terms of effectiveness - you're giving up too many levels in your spellcasting class for too many near-useless fighter levels, and your character is permanently underleveled.

Yeah, it's pretty child-friendly for the most part...right up until the end of the game, anyways - and that's not really "mature" in the normal sense (it's not violent or sexual or anything), but nevertheless, it might still qualify*. To be honest, I'm not sure that en eight year old will "get" Undertale, especially if they've played a lot of other games already, but I guess it doesn't hurt to try. *

That's likely because of the fan kicking in harder as it reaches higher temperatures...and then dropping again when it gets so low. If that's the case, then yeah, that probably suggests you need better cooling, and replacing the thermal paste would certainly be a good idea to start with.

Wheel of Time. I think GD's comment on it is pretty spot on. Sadly, I haven't read any of the others, so I can't really comment upon them.

How much do you enjoy reading about women tugging their hair and smoothing out their clothes?

Most places - not all, but most - won't hesitate for very long to get rid of you if they felt it was the best move. Business is business, right?

I finished Broken Age. Good game with a great first half, and with a not-quite-as-good-but-still-good second half, and an ending that was a little disappointing, and which didn't really solve or explain much - if anything. Also, again, thanks to ShadySands for giving it to me!

Could you send them to me when you finish? For personal use only of course. Sure. I'll do that for IR as soon as I figure out what the heck is screwing up the damage of a few bows for IR (something in the mod is giving like three bows ridiculous damage damage bonuses, and I have no idea what, because it's nothing that I changed - haven't tracked down the bug yet, but I'm working on it). SR will take a little longer, especially because I'll be having surgery on my wrist soon, which will make doing anything pretty difficult for a couple of weeks at the very least.

Yeah, I've completed my Item Revisions "Revised" mod, thankfully, that fixes the rough spots and inconsistencies, among a multitude of bugs. Now I'm working on a Spell Revisions "Revised" on and off...about halfway through.

Okay, I actually checked my own game for Silke via a creature editor (and I currently have full SCS installed), and I'm not sure why she would have that crap. She has an Improved Invisibility, but that's the most powerful spell she has, and she doesn't really have a whole lot of offensive spells to go with it (2 magic missiles, a charm person, and a power word sleep - a little powerful against a low level party, but not crazily so), as she mostly has defensive spells. Not sure how she would've gotten the flesh to stone in your game, but it ain't in mine.

what, are you sure that's SCS - I've fought Silke a few times and can't ever remember a contingency, never mind flesh to stone, holy crap ogre mage I can understand more, and is more easily counterable (especially because iron shattering should be over by the time you get to him), but silke casting level 6 spells is...crazy

Broken Age, courtesy of ShadySands. It's a point and click adventure game, which I'm usually not into, but it's actually pretty dope - good story, good voice acting, and good writing/dialogue. I think I'm probably about halfway through after about 8 hours of playing it. It's only $4 on Steam right now, so I kinda wish I had just bought it myself...but I didn't know for sure if I'd like it or not. As far as P&C games go, the puzzles have left me...er, puzzled, a few times, but overall, it's fairly forgiving, I think. I mean, I don't play P&C games and I haven't had too much trouble.

I stick to Steam and GOG. My opinion on Steam and Valve in general has soured somewhat over the years, and I use it more as messaging platform these days than anything else. I have a relatively high opinion of GOG, and I would think that'd be the platform of choice while being supplemented by Steam for PC. Beyond that, I don't really consider other platforms (especially seeing as I'm not on current consoles).

The only thing I've bought is the BG2:EE soundtrack, which I gifted to somebody who owns the game on my friends list, who sent me the soundtrack. Taking filesharing to a whole new level, baby... Besides that, I'm pretty unlikely to buy anything. I thought I was going to buy the latest Binding of Isaac DLC, Afterbirth+, but only 25% off for a DLC that's been pretty widely criticized to actively make the game worse? Eh, forget about it. Maybe Christmas...or next year.

Potions are actually *my* biggest personal annoyance in SCS, because I personally don't use them, and they're just...everywhere. They just don't stop - everyone has them, and loads of them. Normally, I just have the "break all potions upon enemy death" option enabled, but now you're making me reconsider - perhaps I should just not install the potions component at all. It would be a shame for some fights that used to be a cakewalk that were actually made to be a little bit of a challenge (e.g. the pirate cove in the Docks in BG2), but perhaps that's worth it. I don't have an issue with mages not having "bad" spells memorized - I mean, my own party usually doesn't, and I assume enemies aren't stupid and won't be memorizing Infravision or something. But yeah, if you don't like how hardcore SCS goes, you can always just not uninstall parts of the mod - don't install the improved mages and priests components, don't install improved potions, etc. At the very least, I think the "general improved AI" is a good component to have. Personally, I'm more annoyed by the fact that spellcasters' spellbooks are actually somewhat randomized upon the installation of those two components, instead of being hand-selected. Not a fan of enemies being procedurally generated...

Yeah, that's a glitch.

There's too many decent options to really provide meaningful input, especially not knowing how much you value speed vs capacity. I'd say just look at Tom Hardware's main SSD articles [1, 2] if you want an idea of what's generally considered to be good drives combined with good prices here in the U.S. At the very least, it'll provide a baseline for finding stuff in Sweden. Their "best" lists aren't as good as they used to be, though, sadly... E: in fact, if you're not buying a PCIE/NVME drive, the SATA article is more or less worthless. Bah.

Hmm, not sure he's the best example to use, given his recent claims about the president being incapable of obstructing justice, never mind that he felt a little differently when it came to just that for Bill Clinton.

Well, yeah, she had a noted drug addiction most of her life. It was thought that she had been clean for a while, but it seems not. Perhaps related to her trying to get skinnier for the movie role...

Don't hold your breath: though it would obviously be beneficial for our democracy, from what I understand, it'd be tough to establish political gerrymandering (as opposed to something like racial gerrymandering, which was actually deemed unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in NC recently) as being unconstitutional, and while the more liberal justices may use some...creative reasoning for calling it unconstitutional, it's pretty unlikely that the more conservative justices will. It's something that would have to be fixed in Congress...and given that both parties use it at least some degree, I think that's unlikely to happen any time soon.

man, that's horrific

Not sure how I noticed a lack of an SSD but not a lack of a GPU...