Fez

There is no challenge (so far) in completing the levels or in getting all the bonus wonder seeds. But I think there is a bit of challenge, in some levels, for anyone trying to 100% the game. Some of the levels so far have had some decently hard to get 10-purple coins; albeit usually because they're hidden in some way rather than being mechanically challenging to reach. And there's one level in W1 with p-switches and blue coins that I haven't been able to get all the blue coins yet and so have no idea what the secret there is, but it's been tough (and is the only level I've seen so far with blue coins).

Been playing Super Mario Bros Wonder. It's a bit easy for a platformer, as the 2D Mario games have been for a while now, but its an absolute delight of a game. The wonder seeds found in each level are some of the most creative stuff I've seen in a game in a long time.

Yes actually. They stayed in line for Jordan for instance, even though Jordan never (officially anyway) turned against McCarthy. Just how Trump-y does the Speaker nominee need to be to get their support is a reasonable question. Is someone like Kevin Hern enough now or does it need to be to the level of a Scott Perry?

So the House GOP is going to have a new speaker candidate forum on Monday, a conference vote on Tuesday, and (they hope) a floor vote also on Tuesday Three republicans so far have announced they're running for Speaker (Hern, Bergman, and A. Scott), it sounds like Emmer will too, and there's at least two others actively calling colleagues to assess support. Quite a cattle call. They might need to do rank-choice voting or some such internally, but I feel like any less visible, personally affable, far right candidate would have a decent shot at uniting the conference factions. Most of the votes against Jordan weren't about policy, they were about knifing Scalise in the back and disloyalty to McCarthy. Anyone just as far right who wasn't involved with ousting McCarthy or undermining Scalise I think would get the moderates pretty quickly; it'd only be a question of if Gaetz and friends decide to be pure chaos agents again.

Lol. Jordan just lost a secret ballot vote in the GOP conference about whether to remain the Speaker nominee, 86-112. No idea what comes next now.

I just like thinking through political thought experiments, no matter how unlikely. But today it appears that there's actually more Democrats missing than Republicans. Not enough to change the math substantially, but still a disappointment. Those Democrats better have damn good reasons though.

Well so far its confirmed that Van Orden (a Jordan supporter) arrived in Israel this morning for a "fact-finding mission" instead of staying for the votes so the exodus has already begun.

In the event that a few Republicans have simply gone home in disgust and Democrats temporarily have a floor majority of something like 212-209, they would have the votes for those few hours until those missing Republicans return. But I don't know the House rules around qurom calls if at that point all Republicans simply left nor precisely how quickly a bill can get to the floor.

If there was some incredible fuck-up in GOP vote counting and they end up having a Speaker vote when more Democrats are present than Republicans (which is possible if Jordan's latest idea of "endless back-to-back votes all weekend" happens), I have to think it'll only be a matter of hours for Republicans to get enough members back and hold a motion to vacate to kick Jefferies out. Although, it would be a hilarious moment. Unfortunately, I don't know enough about House rules to know if Democrats would be able to ram through any off-the-shelf bills they have during their short-lived majority. Though presumably Senate Republicans would filibuster any such bills simply on principle.

The other option, which some former advisors to past GOP Speakers have been arguing, is that McHenry already has the power of a Speaker and just isn't using it yet. And that, so long as a majority doesn't vote to stop him, he could proceed with House business. That kind of passive allowance may be more palatable to Republicans. But it would also require the consent of Democrats unless less than 4 Republicans want to stop it (which is doubtful).

It's not about Gaetz, it's about a split right down the middle of House GOP leadership (so called) about whether to go for it or not. And the Republicans blocking Jordan are not, so far at least, willing to go it on their own with Democrats.

Sorry, meant McHenry. Got my "slightly less crazy, former McCarthy allies" mixed up. If this happens, his title changes from "Acting Speaker Pro Tem" to "Speaker Pro Tem". So he's still not really Speaker, but would presumably basically have all the powers until/unless there's a real Speaker. Also, it sounds like a lot of Jordan's allies are turning against him in the House GOP conference meeting going on over this, so who knows what might change today.

Sounds like this is what's happening. Jordan has said he won't seek a 3rd Speaker vote, but will remain speaker-designee and reserve the right to call a vote in the future. And in the mean time he'll support the plan to remove 'Acting' from Emmer's title. There are a chunk of Republicans who oppose this, so Democratic votes will be required.

#4. Tom Emmer gets empowered while still being only Speaker Pro Tem, which almost certainly requires affirmative Dem votes and therefore is a different thing than #2. It also probably will be in short-term increments that require further votes every X days for the rest of the congress.

Most of the RTS space was taken over by MOBA games (DOTA, League of Legends, etc.). They are a continuation of the trends set by the hero-focused RTS games like Warcraft 3. There are still some indie RTS games that release now and then, but I think the biggest RTS game right now is probably actually AoE 2. It always retained some popularity, but got a big boost when the 2019 definitive edition came out; and has gotten 4 new expansions released since then.

The problem is the only remaining potential Republicans left who could potentially do this all want to have many more years of political careers. There's no about-to-retire moderate left who could step in as a career capstone, like Fred Upton.

Yeah, we'll have to see. Republicans had previously threatened to block Feinstein from stepping down from the committee and being replaced. But they didn't say what they would do if she died or retired and there was a new senator from CA. Maybe that would be a bridge too far for some of them. But theoretically they could still block a new appointment and the committee gets stuck for the rest of the session. And getting around that would require one of Manchin or Sinema to vote with the other 49 Democrats+Harris to change the rules.

I agree with the sentiment that Larian's been shielded by the fact that Act I is so polished. Which means that people get 30+ hours before they see any issues and 50+ hours (Act III) before things get really bad. So there were multiple weeks where all the discourse about the game was purely positive. And then, since players hit Act III at different times, there was never a critical mass of people all at once complaining about the problems. Also, many of those players were predisposed to give Larian every possible benefit of the doubt because they had enjoyed the game so much up until then. It's a very different experience from a game that has issues right from the start of playing it.

Cyberpunk 2077 wasn't delisted because of bugs. There's far buggier games out there on the PSN store. It was delisted because CDPR told consumers to contact Sony if they wanted a refund.

I think they will. To me, this was more that the Republicans in the state legislature didn't want to be the ones actually creating the district and then all get primaried as "RINOs" by people who don't understand that they literally did not have a choice. But I don't think they're at the point yet where they will refuse to passively comply with a court-created map.

Of your list, Elden Ring. It's amazing and way less stressful than most From games by nature of it's open world. I'd also strongly rec (if you haven't played them): NieR Automata, The Witcher 3 (just in case you haven't, it is 8 years old now though), the entire recent Hitman trilogy, and Yakuza: Like A Dragon (if you like turn-based games) or Yakuza 0 (if you like action bralwers).

Generally a strong list; though I'd bump up Pathfinder: WoTR a lot and probably push down BG3 at least a few spots. Also, I feel like Final Fantasy Tactics is a notable omission; maybe drop Mass Effect 2 since it already counts as part of the Legendary Edition (and bump that up a bunch).

I'm not sure any of the back-ups actually available are any better than the basically retired veteran free agent QBs; Matt Ryan, Blake Bortles, Colt McCoy, Carson Wentz, etc. Probably better to get one of them for free rather than make a trade. All ugly options, but the Jets legit need to sign someone. Even if they think Wilson is actually the best available option right now, they at least need some sort of back-up for him. Last night, if he went down (and he did look a little concussed one play), Randall Cobb was the available QB3. Unless any of the actually good back-ups are available. But I imagine any team would demand a (relative) king's ransom for them, knowing how desperate the Jets are.

Depends which situations you mean. The crusade system, which is the replacement of the kingdom system, is much easier; almost impossible to lose if you read up a bit on how it works. And you can fully automate it if you want (though you do miss some cool scenes if you do that; also it locks out 2 of the evil mythic paths, which require certain crusade buildings to be manually constructed). For the regular gameplay though, it depends. There are certain fights for instance that are a breeze if you have a certain buff already up (e.g., fire resistance) but very hard otherwise; so you might run into a few reload situations like that. Overall though, I think it is more balanced, with a more smoothed out difficulty compared to Kingmaker. And there are some QoL changes to help out, built into the mythic powers system. Like by mid-Act II you can have your main buff character's buffs that last over 5 minutes last for 24 hours instead, so you can just cast all of them right after a rest instead of trying to guess which fight it makes sense to use them for. Overall, there's still that heavy, heavy "crunch" that the Pathfinder 1e system has, so it really depends on how you feel about that. I adore it, but I get the frustrations around 'trap' builds and the like. If you can at least tolerate it, the game has a really compelling narrative; with way larger, and more meaningful, choices than you usually see in an RPG.

Ah fuck. And just when my little Jets heart was finally beginning to thaw after over a decade of being out in the cold. Although, this does open the slimmest possible window of Tom Brady dressing up as a Jet, which would be objectively hilarious.