Fez

I played it. It's not bad. The problem is the game snowballs hard, in either direction. If you survive the first 20-ish days without major injuries (which requires both a bit of luck and an understanding of the game systems) you become unstoppable pretty quickly. If you don't, it's a long, slow (or fast) spiral into failure. Also, the game doesn't really change over time; there's very few active abilities to learn so to me the combat got stale kinda quick. Also, while the world building is good, there's no plot, so that got old kinda quickly too. I had about 10 fun hours overall out of it and then was done. Some people swear by it though. I find Gloomhaven to be a game that you have to overanalyze every move. Because its extremely easy to fuck up everything. It's not hard exactly, it just requires paying attention to a lot of stuff. It's not my favorite of those legacy-style board games though, I find that the character progression isn't that satisfying. But yeah, Owlcat's Pathfinder games are fantastic. They're extremely long though, even if you play real-time instead of turn-based. And they do have some real bullshit difficulty spikes that require simply restarting areas to apply the correct buffs in advance. Wrath of the Righteous has so many QoL improvements (and additional classes) over Kingmaker that it's very hard for me to go back though.

Not the most important story, but I laughed anyway: https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2023/04/20/mike-lindell-prove-wrong-contest/ A guy who voted for Trump twice is certainly no hero. But good for him for trying to get that money. As for the supposed data:

Perhaps. I don't know enough about the finances of it to know if having a portfolio of 10-15 senators is enough to be worthwhile to a lobbying firm when there's so many other ex-congresspeople/cabinet secretaries/etc. ready for the job as well. But if not, I suppose she could always go the paid speech route instead. I'm sure Third Way would love to give her money.

That depends. I'm sure some lobbying firm will throw her a ton of money for a little bit. But I suspect she'll be wildly ineffective as a lobbyist and get cut off pretty quickly. She burned too many bridges with Democrats, they'll never listen to her. And Republican-orientated firms have enough ex-Republican congresspeople that they don't need her.

Yeah, I'm really rooting against the Suns here. It's a shame, because if KD wasn't there I'd absolutely be rooting for CP3 to finally have some playoff success. But not now. Also, I know this isn't a hot take at all, but there were more injuries than usual this early in the playoffs, right? Seemed like every game this weekend had at least one big one.

KAT certainly got into foul trouble, but his 5th was really like his 8th or 9th. Overall though, I thought both teams played pretty poorly. I think the Lakers are gassed from the run they needed to even reach this point, and absolutely need the next few off days they've got. And the Wolves were missing Gobert (I haven't watched enough to know if missing McDaniels was also an issue or not).

I'm a neutral observer, I've had no team fandom since giving up on the Knicks for good (at least as long as Dolan's there). And there were a crazy number of fouls committed by the Wolves that were never called. It'd have been a Lakers blowout otherwise.

I've got my eye on Dredge, an eldritich horror/fishing sim game. It's out already and has kinda blown up on Steam, at least as far as a single player, linear indie game can (i.e., still has 6k concurrent players right now, 2 weeks after release). But I've spent too much money on various things the past couple months so I just can't justify buying any more games right now. I'll definitely get it at some point though. Some upcoming games I'm looking forward to as well are: Roots of Pacha- Seems to be a stone age-themed Stardew Valley clone. It got a spot in an Xbox live stream last year though, so I assume it's not just a cheap asset flip. Age of Wonders 4- Latest in the 4x series. RPS had an article on it a few months back that sounds like they've got some kinda unprecedented degrees of freedom when it comes to faction customization. Miasma- Latest tactics game from the devs who made Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden. Which wasn't a perfect game, but was fun and I'm curious to see what their latest offering is. Mask of the Rose- It's by the devs behind the Fallen London/Sunless Sea/Sunless Skies games. But apparently it's a visual novel/dating sim set in that world. I'm very curious to see what this is.

Yeah, it's a bit of an odd decision choice that. There are those omens that you can choose to make certain weapons show up more frequently, but I haven't tried them yet. And they kinda seem like a waste of an omen slot when there's ones like "make wooden walls have 50% more health".

Just cracked 850 hours on Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous. Except for maybe WoW back in the day I don't think I've played a game nearly as much as this. I just love the character build variety so much. Also I figured out some of the main reward loops of Destiny 2 so I've been playing that some too. And with The Last Spell out of early access I've been making my way through that. It's a turn-based tactics/tower defense rogue-like with some kickass background music.

John Edwards career was dead long before he was indicted. So that's a strawman. And Cohen shouldn't have gone to prison for it either, that basically was weaponization of the justice system by Trump. I think you're extremely wrong about Mueller. I think Republicans rallying around him due to it was the only thing keeping him afloat when he was losing support over the ACA repeal fiasco. And I think this will help in in the Republican primary now. And if Trump's the nominee, sure I think he's weaker than most other Republicans, but any nominee has a shot. Also, I am entirely onboard with prosecuting fascists for being fascists. It's weird, hard-to-explain campaign violations that I'm less interested in.

I'm all for Trump getting charged for all the crimes he's committed. But I feel like this is pretty weak sauce and hope that the Georgia and potentially federal indictments come soon. This is pretty much the exact thing John Edwards was charged with, and he was found not guilty on one count and had a hung jury on the other charges (and the case wasn't re-tried). If Trump is found not guilty of something that'll have enormous blowback I fear.

Barely politics related, but I found this fascinating. I guess the connection is, "hey, with sufficient funding it looks like the IRS really is able to do its job again" https://www.numlock.com/p/numlock-news-march-28-2023-crocs

I never thought anyone left in the Likud parliamentary party would ever stand up to Bibi. But it seems like enough of the local power blocks of the party did turn on the judicial "reform" bill that some of them felt they had to. His coalition is only a 4 seat margin. I don't think he has the votes now to pass the bill. And I don't think the far right pulls out of the coalition if the bill fails. They've never had power before and now they control a bunch of important ministries, which they risk losing if there's a snap election. However, I think Bibi wants the bill passed to protect himself, so he'll keep pushing all on his own. Guess we'll see if there's enough sustained anger to keep the pressure up or if they manage to quietly pass the bill in the summer.

Western estimates from pre-invasion of how much ammo is needed for a modern war seem like they were dramatically off. I saw an article the other day that Pentagon analysts now estimate that in an all-out non-nuclear war with China the US would run out of precision missiles in a week. The US needs to dramatically up is ammo production overall, not just for Ukraine. But it seems like there's multiple problems, both on the funding side (too much Defense spending earmarked for pet projects) and capacity side (not enough munitions factories any more). I'd be surprised if either issue is solved this year.

I kinda got the urge to play Destiny 2, which I haven't touched since 2018, and holy hell was I immediately completely lost. I debated making a new character rather than going back to my old one, but I'm not sure that would help much either. At least maybe it would remind me what's going on narratively, I think? Although I did have a few neat cosmetics on the old one. Anyone have any advice for getting back into the game?

Housing starts grew by 13.8% in February. Maybe it's a one-month fluke, but it's not what I'd expected to see if interest rates were closing off demand or if a recession was imminent.

My thinking is that longterm, yes, an enormous mess/collapse is coming, barring some massive systematic changes (ha!). But that particular piper isn't coming calling for another 15-20 years. I think the problems SVB faced were relatively isolated, and it was only due to the likelihood of mass irrational panic (which becomes very rational if enough other people are doing it) that there was a chance of a major bank run-related crisis this week. I also think that recession fears are overblown. Certain industry sectors are faring poorly, mostly ones that were reliant on low interest rates. But most metrics are showing a relatively healthy economy, albeit one struggling with inflationary pressures. There is a wildcard of what happens if the US breaches the debt ceiling. But, barring that, I'm not too concerned about where things are a year from now. Feel free to gloat come December if I'm wrong.

I'm perfectly content to say JLC's Oscar is a make up win for "A Fish Called Wanda" (and, really, "Freaky Friday") and call it a day. But I'm more interested in recognizing careers than individual performances anyway. I think its just too hard to accurately make comparisons across something as subjective as specific roles.

Everyone ready for this Sunday? At least we'll be getting to the better time again. There's another effort in Congress this year to make DST permanent, but there doesn't seem to be as much optimism as last year. https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2023/03/09/daylight-saving-time-bill/

... No. My hypothesis is that events can move very quickly and without warning. And often times you don't know who the first mover will be until they act; because if they are known, the dictator almost certainly will remove them long before they can act. Your assumption that Putin is untouchable is as wrong as your assumptions about the 2020 election were.

Well, it's not VtM:B2. But I'm certainly intrigued by Harebrained's latest: Wish there was more gameplay than just the bit at the end. But I do like the setting and the genre a whole lot.

Literally every single person in the Kremlin besides the admin staff. It's easy for Putin to kill a general, or a high level FSB officer, or anyone else. Because individually they are weak, no question. But collectively they are the apparatuses of the state itself, and they can easily remove Putin if there's a sea-change in circumstances. Dictators fall extremely easily if they lose that general support. There's nothing that makes Putin special compared to any of the rest.

There's also been a couple long-time dictators removed from power recently too. Robert Mugabe was removed via coup in Zimbabwe in 2017 when his inner circle and the military got tired of him. And Omar al-Bashir was removed via coup in Sudan in 2019 when the military turned on him due to the economic crisis there. Mugabe had been in power for about 40 years and al-Bashir had been for 20 years. Both seemed untouchable until they weren't. No leader rules entirely alone, not even the Kims in North Korea. There are always elites that, while easily dominated individually, have the power if they unite.

Hmm. I'm very interested in hearing whatever Harebrained is working on. And in fact, I wonder if they're actually the developer that has VtM:B2? Paradox has never said which developer was working on it after the game got pulled from the original devs.