Fez

For reference, here's the first trailer for that: It's hard to make an honest comparison, knowing how bad that movie turned out. But, to me, it's a pretty comparable trailer to this new one.

They appear to be entering hyperspace at 1:08. The crossover finally occurs!

I'm about 40 hours into P5R but haven't played in about 10 days and I'm not sure I'll be getting back to it. I had a lot of fun at first but the combat doesn't feel deep enough to last another 60+ hours, and I'm not enjoying the rest of the game enough to last through it. The characters aren't drawing me in the way P4G's did, most of the confidants aren't much fun, the writing feels very weak in a lot of places (although there are some great bits too), and I'm not interested in the central story (in fact, I'm not even sure what it is). Still, the game simply oozes style and I'm glad I saw it for a while. The core gameplay does feel great and I think they really nailed the 40k atmosphere. I am worried about the amount of grind needed for new weapons though, and the fact that there's only 4 classes and most of the perks look pretty lame makes me concerned that it'll get stale much faster than Vermintide 2. Also, the character creation is fun, but with there being 12 different personalities (and 21 separate voice options) there seems to be much less character banter than VT2 had with its 5 characters. There's still a bit, but most of the dialog appears to be undirected combat barks and quips. Which is a shame. And there doesn't appear to be a story after the prologue, just a setting. I've seen rumors that the story will unfold over seasons. But considering Fatshark's trouble sticking to deadlines, that idea concerns me; if it's even true at all.

Okay, so how do you explain Frank McCloskey getting seated over Rick McIntyre in 1984? That was pure power politics by Democrats.

It's really not. The House could've (and debated in committee) seating Rita Hart in 2020 despite Miller-Meeks being certified by Iowa as the winner. There was no question the House had the power to do so, Democrats just didn't want to overturn the election result even though there was grounds to do so. ETA: Another example would the 1984 IN-04 race, where Democrats actually did ignore Indiana's certification and seated the other candidate after conducting their own, independent recount.

It won't happen though; funny as the prospect is. The House has final say over its membership and it would seat Ciscomani as the winner anyway. But it won't come to even that, Arizona law doesn't actually allow the state to certify without all the county tallies (although Arizona law also doesn't allow a county to refuse to certify, but that just means a judge needs to compel them to do so).

I believe he and his family moved to Michigan earlier this year, so I suspect he's done with Indiana politics. Maybe a run for Michigan governor in 4 years instead.

I think the biggest tangible way a primary loser Trump hurts the GOP nominee is by going back to his usual playback and suing; trying to find courts that somehow would make him the nominee instead. None of them would. But depending on how lucky he gets with lower judges, he could possibly tangle up the nomination process for several weeks; delaying the nominee's ability to access general election funds the RNC has raised and stuff like that. Which in turn could lead to more inefficient campaign activities when the dust is settled, like having to pay more expensive TV ad rates.

In sad news, we already our have first vacancy of the new House: Donald McEachin (D-VA) has died. It's a safe Democratic district, but it makes the Republican margin for error slightly larger until the election is held. And goes to show just how unstable the House might've been if Democrats had held an extra couple of seats.

Seems like none of them. I really thought Democrats would pick up CA-13 (this is different from the old, safe CA-13, aka Barbara Lee's district) but it looks like Gray has lost it by 560ish votes. Final House tally appears to be a 222-213 R majority. Which is slim, but not unprecedented; in fact it's the mirror image of the majority Democrats won in 2020.

In fortuitous timing, Vice did an oral history of this very clip just a couple months ago: https://www.vice.com/en/article/qjkv9q/an-oral-history-of-tim-currys-escape-to-the-one-place-uncorrupted-by-capitalism

There needs to be a peace, or at least a cease-fire at some point, no war is endless. And it seems unlikely that either side will achieve a decisive victory, at least in Crimea itself. Sure the fighting could just stop at some point, like in Korea, but that leaves Ukraine in a worse spot than an agreement like this because it would de facto cede Crimea to Russia. Okay, not Turkey then. It could be any country with the logistics to run the vote and that wants a bit of international kudos. Bring in South Africa or somebody like that.

Seems like the most "fair" option would be for an agreement that a neutral 3rd party (maybe Turkey?) conduct a referendum in Crimea about its future. Maybe with a clause that a 60% threshold is needed for a final decision, and anything less results in another referendum in 2 years or something. If a sizable majority of Crimean residents want to join Russia, it seems best for everyone that they do so. Including Ukraine, which would avoid having a large pro-Russian voter bloc participating in its future elections.

Yeah, but there's less than 200 votes to count. So it's over, unless the recount finds a lot of discrepancies.

Boebert's lead in CO3 is down to 723 votes after county reporting overseas/cured/provisonal ballots today. There's still a few counties left to report, but Pueblo is in, so no expected big sources of Democratic votes are left. Seems extremely unlikely that a recount flips a lead that large. So this is a near certain Republican hold now, putting them at 219 in the House. A 221-214 final tally seems most likely.

IMO the only real competition is Frances Perkins, FDR's Secretary of Labor for his entire presidency. Among her accomplishments, she: Was the first female cabinet member, and 4th longest lasting cabinet member in US history Wrote an awful lot of the New Deal, including leading the committee that designed the Social Security Act Kept the US workforce smoothly operating throughout World War II, getting deals in place with unions to prevent strikes and policies created for women entering the workforce for the first time. "Creatively administered" the US immigration service (which was within DoL at the time) to get ~300,000 additional refugees from '30s Germany admitted to the US beyond what the quotas at the time allowed

I believe this will be the first time since 1960 that either party's House and Senate leader are both elected from the same state. Back then it was Sam Rayburn and LBJ, who were both elected from Texas. Not sure it'll mean that much, except that hopefully it'll mean a lot more campaign funding flowing in to fix the New York state party and to flip back the House districts that were lost there this year.

I used to assume Johnson was just lucky; he swept in on the red wave of 2010 and was buoyed by Trump winning the state in 2016. The fact that he won again this year, even as Evers also won, tells me that no, he's not just lucky; he's got his finger on the pulse of what a majority of Wisconsin voters want.

Yeah, the PA-32 district. The dead guy got 85% of the vote, but against a Green party candidate with no Republican running. From what I've read it is a very blue district though. I don't know how the tie gets handled until then. There's also the issue that two other Democrats need to very shortly resign from the House, Summer Lee because she was elected to Congress and Austin Davis who was just elected Lt. Gov. I guess both of them ran in two races. Anyway their resignations will both trigger special elections as well. I saw speculation that both would cast votes on January 3rd to make a Democrat the state house speaker before resigning, but I don't know how that works the dead guy or what the loss of the majority until the special elections would mean. Also, Summer Lee would need to very quickly get from Harrisburg to DC to get sworn in to Congress since that Speaker vote is also on January 3rd. Although I guess that only really matters if the margin in the House is tight enough that Democrats are getting up to some mischief.

Two other big pieces of state legislature news: 1) On recount Democrats flipped a PA state house seat that they'd been behind by 12 votes on and instead won by 37 votes. So on called races Democrats have a 101-100 majority in the chamber with 2 races left that are on recount; Ds have a 37 vote lead in one and Rs a 54 vote lead in the other. If they split, Democrats will in fact take the chamber. 2) In New Hampshire, after recounts Republicans have a 200-199 majority in the state house. In the 400th seat, the recount found that there was actually a tie. So that's fun, a tie to determine if there's a tie. Apparently in NH there's usually a special election in the case of a tie, but the law only says that its up to the House to decide the winner; whatever that means.

Looks like the final tally is: Romney, Portman, Collins, Tillis, Murkowski, Burr, Lummis, Sullivan, Capito, Blunt, Ernst, and Young. That makes 12. I'm surprised at Toomey being a 'No' in the end. Also surprised by Lummis being a yes, I figured she was a bog-standard crazy MAGA type.

House Republicans are some of the dumbest people alive. Film at 11.

From the people who made Searching, which is one of the more creative movies I've seen in the past several years:

I figured McConnell and Scott voted, but I don't know for sure. And yeah, apparently his wife had a "significant but not life-threatening" seizure and he's staying in Nebraska with her.

Not sure if Toomey voted. I thought this was the new conference, except Sasse who's out of town (and no Walker since he hasn't won). Interestingly Graham has said he voted for Scott. Amazing how far he's gone from being a reliable establishment guy.