Raithe

For that slight step away and return to the votes, this might interest a few folks: https://cookpolitical.com/2020-national-popular-vote-tracker

Following the news that the Pope's Instagram accidentally liked a risque model's ass pic..

Now, the key question.. Is that camel doing Blue Steel?

That's one of the things I've noticed in reading a few things, is that within China there is a, not quite sure I'd say racist/nationalist crossover attitude or belief that no-matter where in the world you are, no matter how many generations have been living in a different country, if you're of Chinese descent then you are Chinese!(tm) and are traitorous slime if you don't defend the country or do whatever the state requests of you for the glorious country of your ancestors birth... And especially if you make the attempt at reading some of those webnovels that Chinese authors put out, the sense of "Everybody in the world picks on us!" when they view the world outside of China hits fairly heavily. I'm never sure whether to take that as actual attitudes or just what the authors have to put in to make sure their stories get past any censorship.

There are some strange things afoot there. I remember a couple of years back, Amazon actually started to crack down on "allowable" fiction and such, which caused a little free speech argument. There was an interview with a middle-aged lady who unsurprisingly wrote under a nom de plume, but she wrote books in the "cryptozoology erotica thriller" genre (specialising in anthropomorphic dinosaurs and velociraptor kink) and had become one of the "top sellers"... She mentioned she'd started doing it almost as a joke, just to get a little extra income in to help with paying her kids college bills. After about 4 months, she was regularly pulling in $2,000+ a month due to those sales. Also, her parents were the editors for every novel she put up on kindle. The things you can never remover from your memory after finding them on the internet...

Oh god, when I feel down and depressed I go onto kindle and look up the "monster porn erotica" - My god, the cover art and the book synopsis just have me in stitches and I end up feeling better once I get past the insane giggling.

China does have the developing tradition of what translates as "water armies" - basically a building full of geeks all running dozens if not hundreds of fake social media accounts to help shape/direct public perception and opinion. However, from my raw understanding, that's generally more of an internal, within the country thing, quite often used for celebrities and companies more than anything else. Russia has that developed as part of their cyberwarfare program as a means to shape opinions in other countries, and obfuscate any stories that involve Russian interests. That's what a lot of Trumpists seem to ignore, Russian interference wasn't in creating fake votes, it was designed to shape public perception, create discord, and convince people. Basically, all the things that any normal politician is doing these days. It was creating slanted news stories and making sure they get fed into peoples news feeds on an endless cycle, reinforcing beliefs and attitudes. Its psychological and social, not fraud and artificial votes.

Eurogamer - Next Mass Effect teased with new artwork

Went through some morning meetings, was working on some data analysis, went into our online Employee Central to check something... And saw that I had apparently booked today off on vacation for a long weekend as part of their "make sure your holidays are booked in advanced and there's no rush or large gaps when covid is over" 4+ months back. Apparently, I'd completely forgotten about it, and it wasn't showing in my calendar, so I've already spent over half the day actually working. Le Sigh.

Michael Fox on officially retiring from Acting due to health issues: "My guitar playing is no good. My sketching is no good anymore, my dancing never was good, and acting is getting tougher to do. So it's down to writing. Luckily, I really enjoy it."

I think in some parts it's also the nostalgia kick for the original Cyberpunk RPG. Cyberpunk 2013 was published in the late 80's, pretty much jumped into the zeitgeist of William Gibson, and the evolution of Bladerunner from failed cinema release to cult classic. It was one of the earliest "hard cyberpunk" rpg's, and as I recall, its generally ranked in the top 10/ top 20 lists of role-playing games over the last few decades. The company behind it went on a hiatus for about a decade, and then didn't do anything new for Cyberpunk. So there's a surprising core of now mature gamers with lots of disposable income and fond memories of playing this when they were teenagers, who were left unsatisfied when the 2nd generation of the game pretty much ended a metagame arc with serious potential world changing elements. Cyberpunk 2077 is picking up where their old dreams and hopes have been left hanging for 20 years.

I've been enjoying Kindle Unlimited for a few years now. Some months I don't read any via Kindle, other months I read 10+. There is a lot of drek, and badly done (but amusing concepts) self-published through the service, and I regularly find little gems and things that keep me entertained.

B5 always did like to slip in a bit of philosophy and moralising..

For the setting of a disturbing precedent... Disney attempts to withold royalty payments from Alan Dean Foster