Hurlshort

There is a long and glorious history of making fun of new console designs.

Hades, may he rest in peace, would have hated this game.

So...apparently this guy races with the confederate flag. And in keeping with confederate tradition, he never wins.

In other news, Rage Against the Machine had a hilarious response to complaints that they've become too political: https://www.nme.com/news/music/tom-morello-twitter-respond-to-people-only-just-realising-rage-against-the-machine-are-political-2685353

I tried to navigate through the crazy amount of Stellaris DLC before starting a new campaign. I already had Federations, but I decided to add the humanoid pack so I could make a dwarf galactic mining consortium, and the artifact story pack. I know I should have waited for a sale, but I want to play now! This DLC stuff is dangerous, you can spend waaaay too much on it.

So last month we had local militia folk showing up armed to government buildings to protest wearing masks or whatever, and now we have local antifa folk showing up armed to parks to protest the police or whatever. What is the difference, again?

You guys are crazy. It is clearly the fact that cities are filled with democrats and small towns are filled with Republicans.

https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-52990714 I've never really seen any of the characters in Gone With the Wind as positive. They are all pretty terrible people. Rhett and Scarlett are both anti-heroes. That being said, this reaction to the film is not new. It goes back to when it was released. https://www.umass.edu/newsoffice/article/professor-offers-black-perspective-anniversary-gone-wind

It's crazy when you think about some of the talent the Mariners have had, too.

Sooooo excited for Bill & Ted. edit: I've been trying to watch Mortal Engines. It is ponderous.

I've been getting my sports fix from HBO documentaries. I watched a 2-part series on Muhammad Ali. It is an interesting contrast to see his career after watching the Michael Jordan Last Dance series a couple weeks ago. Jordan came across as a win at all costs champ. He was hyper focused on that and would sacrifice anything else. Can't argue his greatness, but it can be hard to admire what he did to get there. Ali, on the other hand, was willing to sacrifice his titles to do what he thought was right. He transcends his sport. I also watched one on Kareem Abdul Jabbar. I was too young to really know much about him, but he also has a fascinating story. It made a great parallel story after watching Ali. He was a lot more likable than Jordan. These were also good reminders that we've come a long way since the 60's. People tend to look at current events as if these are the worst times ever in history. They aren't. Get some perspective.

You leave Mr. Volo alone, you!

I would love to see the police help build infrastructure. I have no idea how that would look and how feasible it would be, but I just like the idea of it.

The more reasonable defunding measures seems to be more aimed at getting rid of the expensive military type equipment. APC's, for example. Seems a bit unlikely. I tend to agree that I would rather that funding be directed to proper training, accountability, and counseling.

At least GD goes after the bad cops and the bad protesters equally. I see a ton of folks who try to tar and feather one side while ignoring the other. Of course, I also think it is fair to have a much higher bar for the police than for some people that show up to a protest and get violent.

https://antidepressantsortolkien.xebuz.now.sh/?fbclid=IwAR3wBAooeyBttmsGPHnjj3NEWbmiivyw8dzfxsTWZdGVQdy1zHDzC7dj6Ng Hardest test I've ever taken. 15/24.

2 weeks out from my bike crash, and I was able to do a nice long 9-mile run today relatively pain free. I climbed one decent grade on the route, and the uphill felt good. Downhill was a bit rough, but at least I didn't fly off the side of the mountain. I saw a bunch of my cycling buddies too, so that was fun. I still have a sizable pocket of fluid on my thigh. I wore a compression sock to keep it from bouncing and that worked well. My thigh also seems to have a bit of a permanent dent in it. I'll have to wait and see what happens as it continues to heal. The doctor said he isn't worried unless it gets infected, and at this point it is doing everything normal and doesn't hurt badly. It just looks super weird and feels weirder. My wife says I have a healthy A cup boob on my leg. She is using my new boob to stress the importance of her getting high quality sports bras. Apparently women deal with flopping pockets of fluid every day. I can run with this cast on my hand all day! It is starting to smell bad though.

I used to be very pro-police. Then I took a 12-week community outreach course hosted by our local police department, and it changed my opinion completely. I still believe your average law enforcement officer wants to do the right thing. I still know a ton of cops in different branches, and they aren't bad people. But there are massive flaws in the entire systems. 1. Accountability: How many police involved shootings were there last year? How many officers drew a weapon on someone? You can't find the data. We do not track it. Police departments and unions have consistently stood in the way of collecting the very data that would allow them to recognize problematic trends on a local, state, and federal level. We track crime, we do not track law enforcement. I don't understand this at all. I want to see data driven changes and results. 2. Training: Law enforcement is a drill and kill environment. That makes sense in emergency response situations. When you are dealing with life and death, you want training to override panic. But it also makes for complete inability to think critically. There is not enough time spent training conflict resolution and restorative justice and too much emphasis on using weapons and force. If you had reliable data, you could direct your training properly. 3. Militarization: Is the job to protect and serve the people? Or is it to enforce the law? I believe the police should be serving the community first and foremost. The law is a tool towards serving that community. It's not Judge Dredd, it shouldn't be the other way around. Most of these police brutality situations are very clearly not serving the community. George Floyd was accused of using a fake $20 bill. Why was use of force necessary there? If it was true, it didn't serve the store to have him physically handled in that manner. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/02/26/trump-administration-says-that-militarizing-police-reduces-crime-is-that-true/

At first I thought it said Gene Hackman was turned invisible.

Expansions are like 99 coins (or whatever their currency is) to unlock right now, in case you are missing any. I started a brand new account, so it was nice to unlock everything for relatively cheap. My son has my old account. I regret it a bit because that means my high level captain is pretty much retired, but I wanted him to have access to everything as he started out, and it was a gopod way to get me to start fresh. Just reached Angmar.

Huh, well if they put Andromeda on it, maybe I will finally play that.

LotRO definitely has a very clear story line that you are working towards. It just took them like 10+ years to get there, whereas the movies got there in 10 hours. Speaking of which, my Mordor dwarf has just reached level 40 and fought the evil dwarf Skorgrim alongside Gimli. I've been sticking mostly to the book quests, so things are moving quickly. I remember it took about a year of regular play to get to 40 when the game first came out. I'm excited to reach Moria at 50, but I want to try and finish all of the book quests before I do that. I bought some of these coins that let you jump directly to certain quest givers, since I know they can send you all over the map and it gets pretty tiresome trying to hoof it everywhere. I also have a Beorning delivering mail in the shire and and avoiding nosey hobbits. I think I might just stay there with him, it's such a nice change of pace to just wander around there.

Pretty sure the joke is that Bethesda is all about gay rights except in countries where they are needed the most.

Wait, inexpensive industrial cleaning agents are harmful? Shocking.