Agiel

Addendum piece from Mackenzie Eaglen at AEI:

Emphases mine.

In honour of the 65th anniversary of the first French woman to break the sound barrier, Jacqueline Auriol, flying a Dassault Mystère II. Serendipitously enough Auriol shares her given name with the first woman to break the sound barrier, Jacqueline Cochran, who accomplished the feat earlier that same year.

Firefighter from Utah dies battling Mendocino Complex, the largest wildfire in California Trump _COULD_ go to California to be the comforter-in-chief, as presidents both Republican and Democrat before him have done in such occasions, but by all means he can play "He-Said, She-Said" with Omarosa. God knows those two friggin' deserve each other.

In light of Mattis' earlier opposition to the prospect, I can't help but think Mad Dog is still saying in a deep, mournful Goliath voice "Gee... I don't know, Donnie."

And now for some easy listening:

South Carolina manufacturer says it's closing plant over Trump tariffs. They say experience is the best teacher... https://youtu.be/sBffNiUOeiA?t=6s

As if a sign from the heavens I found this video while drinking some J&B Scotch.

Ob's stürmt oder schneit...

In spite of being the biggest Homeworld fan here I somehow got sidetracked half-way through Deserts of Kharak when it first came out. I finally came around to finishing it recently and man what a journey. There's a level of craft to that game that's hard to find in games of its league, from the sense of scale the artists instill into the player, to the idle unit banter, to the tracks in the sand left by a lone Baserunner making its way across the desert (even with the budgetary might of Blizzard the in-engine cinematics of Starcraft fail to be as cinematic as this game). Looking forward to whatever Blackbird Interactive comes out with next.

Man, this was such a pleasant surprise:

Maybe it's just me being some "college-educated littoral elite-type", but I never really got Trump's appeal to the "salt-o-the-earth" crowd since I found the act as transparently disingenuous as Clinton's attempt at a southern drawl. Every time Trump goes to one of those rallies I can't help but think back to Mayor Quimby at the beginning of a certain Simpsons episode: Except replace "drink" with "stiff Diet Coke".

Think of all the HMO administration jobs that will disappear overnight when you introduce single-payer healthcare.

Frankly Trump himself is to blame for sabotaging his own legislative efforts, if purely by negligence. He has neither the inclination nor energy to lobby members of congress, attempted to drive a wedge between red state democrats and the party leadership, or bothered to visit Maine, Alaska, or Arizona while AHCA and the Skinny Repeal was on the line. Hell, he doubled down on divisiveness on an issue that could have gotten bi-partisan support: Immigration (even Cesar Chavez, nominal saint of the left, came out as a hardliner against illegal immigration).

Just a lot of the usual "I'm back in college and I have to take a final for a class I hardly ever showed up for" nightmares.

Watching more of the beta videos of Kingmaker I don't know if there's much in the writing thus far that is identifiably in Chris Avellone's voice (i.e. deconstructions at every corner). Seems like it's more by-the-numbers, if largely inoffensive, fantasy writing to me.

Still astonishes me that there's young who people want these jobs back, in spite of having parents who told them they did the work so they could grow up not doing it.

I won't debate that, and arguably this approach is also part of Macron's vision for re-energising France's economy. However Trump talked up a big game that not one cent would be cut from Social Security and Medicare, a platform break from the GOP that likely clinched him the nomination. The goals of ensuring the solvency of entitlement programs for the future, cutting taxes on the wealthy, a proposed infrastructure program, and an increase in defence spending (the current budget was somewhat less than what many analysts were predicting) are tough to reconcile.

Since Trump is under the belief that Putin runs a tight ship, I'm curious if he'd be willing to take a page out of his playbook to MRGA, considering the crisis the US Social Security system is in: Hey, the MAGA crowd might give Trump a pass on it. The way some of them tell it the single issue that makes or breaks a candidate for them is whether or not he or she will be careful not to hurt Trump's feelings.

Considering that this had a Kickstarter campaign, and in light of the long-established tradition of Russian/Eastern-European game developers initially announcing hopelessly optimistic release dates I'm actually astonished that this is coming out reasonably soon after it was first announced.

Looked up an LP of the beta. While I will likely hold off until full reviews come in, from what I've skimmed through so far it looks promising enough I suppose.