Fez

I died a second time on my whirlwind build. So I swapped to a bleed build and easily cleared it. Unfortunately bleed doesn't seem that fun outside of boss fights; too slow to ramp up the damage against trash. It's a shame that you can't save build templates. Even if you have to pay to respec each time, it would be nice if you could save what you want. Because I could see it getting really old real fast if I regular need to swap around.

Anyone else convicted of this charges, up to and include top-level White House staff, cabinet secretaries, or members of congress, would face significant prison time. I agree that there's a decent chance Trump won't, but only because he was President. There's ton of other, less powerful white dudes who would be finished if convicted here. And I wouldn't rule out Trump too; especially if he doesn't win the GOP nomination and therefore there's less concern about the political fallout.

Next time Democrats have a trifecta they should push it again. Although if that should be 2025, I don't know if they'll be willing to immediately spend political capital on this; which they'd have to with the current 1/1/25 debt ceiling deadline (although that's pre-next round of emergency measures, so there'd be a few months).

Got to her this morning on my barb. It was the first time I died in game; haven't beaten her yet. I felt like I was doing decent damage, it was just too hard to avoid the damage. Which feels like maybe a weakness of melee in general, rather than a barbarian specific problem? Not sure yet.

Lol, the judge is Aileen Cannon, the one that tried appointing a special master to the investigation until the circuit court slapped her down. What a shitshow if she's still presiding when this goes to trial. ETA: There's a good chance she won't be; either from the circuit stepping in early to order her to recuse herself or from DOJ appealing the assignment.

Dunno. Personal opinions and all that. I'm only up to 15 on Barb now, but I'm having a blast. If I pop rallying cry at the right moment I can have basically unlimited uptime on whirldwind if there's enough enemies around; it's very satisfying.

The big thing will be whether this gets applied to the Florida case going to trial this summer. But even without that, I think it gives them anywhere from +1 to +4 (AL, LA, NC, and GA- there was a similar case in GA that was put on hold pending the outcome of the AL case).

Well I just played through the prologue again lol, this time as a barbarian. And I think I finally found my class. The attacks just feels so impactful and smooth. Time to finally start playing through the game!

A major shock. Looks Kavanaugh was the other conservative in the majority. This is going to net Democrats an extra couple seats in the House.

Some of those messaging bills can be legit tough votes for Democrats. Some can even end up as law, like the DC criminal code recission. Biden didn't actually threaten a veto on the gas stove bill in his disapproval message.

It's what I was posting about yesterday, with the failed rule vote. They seem to be threatening to keep doing that. Which, if they succeed, is more than performative. It means that House Republican Leadership will not be able to hold any votes on anything else, without either caving to the HFC or cutting a deal with Democrats (which is very unlikely for many reasons, for anything short of ending a shutdown).

Decided to be part of the gaming zeitgiest for the first time in a while and picked this up too. I've gone through the prologue as both a rogue (melee) and sorcerer (ice) and I can't decide between them which I want to stick with.

Do you mean the HFC actions or the underlying bill around gas stoves? With gas stoves, there was another report a few months back finding that they're a significant source of indoor air pollution. And relatedly, New York passed a law banning stoves for new homes built starting in 2025; as part of their effort to shift the state more toward renewable energy. As a result, as with every change no matter how big or small, conservatives took this as a foundational attack on their way of life and it became yet another huge culture war fight. With the HFC, they're a bunch of whiny loudmouths who are pissed that McCarthy managed to bypass them on the debt ceiling and are acting out. But they aren't trying to remove him (yet, at least) because there is no one else who can win a Speaker vote right now. So instead they forced the first floor vote failure on a rule since 2002.

Things are getting spicy in the House. Republicans planned to pass a resolution barring the administration from implementing new regulations on gas stoves (just a meaningless messaging bill since the senate will probably never vote on it). But in the floor vote on the rule to allow debate, most of the HFC voted 'no' in protest of the debt limit bill. And since all Democrats voted 'no' since its a dumb bill (and the minority party almost always votes no rules no matter what), the vote is currently failing 207-219. The vote hasn't been closed yet (after 50 minutes), so maybe something gets worked out. But if this isn't a one-off, the House is now ungovernable without Democratic support.

I'm no expert. But my understanding we already have some decent theoretical models for warp drives, and if we don't wipe ourselves out maybe we get to test them out eventually. An alien species that was more peaceful than ours, and with a bit more advanced energy production, could probably test them at roughly our current level of technology. Maybe none of them actually work in practice, but to me it seems like the paradox is still fully in place.

That would make sense to me. Russia purposefully fucking over Crimea like this seems kinda counter-intuitive.

Happy to sheepishly be wrong and I have bought some new investments instead. And in the case of my Roth IRA, I literally just rebought some of my old positions that I had previously been happy with. All in all, since it had such minor tax implications, it actually was a decent opportunity to rebalance my portfolio anyway, and I think things really were dicey a couple weeks ago, I have no regrets.

Democrats did vote against the rule, but only 2 Republicans did instead of all 3 HFC members. So things proceed smoothly. Honestly not sure what would've happened if the rule was defeated.

It's not misleading, it was a big bill that Obama negotiated and wanted passed, and House Dems were against it. As for the BCA, 95 still means a majority of them opposed it. Unfortunately, House Report 112-190 which allowed for consideration of the BCA passed the rules committee in an unrecorded vote, so I've no idea if the House Dems in the rules committee voted against bringing it to the floor. But again, didn't matter since they had no power to block it anyway.

In a similar situation, with a Democratic president negotiating with a Republican house we got the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012. In that floor vote, only 17 House Democrats voted for the bill, while 171 voted against it. McGovern is the only House Dem on the rules committee now who was in the House in the time and he was in the 171. Democratic votes weren't needed in committee since Republican leadership was still strong enough that they could ensure that only their allies filled the Republican seats on the committee. It is different this time, in that Democratic votes will actually be needed, both on the floor and in the committee. But there is precedent for the House Democrats to near fully reject a deal that their president negotiated with House Republicans. We don't know yet how House Dems are going to come down on this bill.

Right, and if those 3 voted against and the House Dems on the committee voted against it, that's be a 7-6 vote to block the bill from hitting the floor. House Dems weren't involved in these negotiations and one thing that isn't McCarthy's job is whipping Democratic votes. But if the House Dems feel that the White House has given up too much, things can get complicated fast.

It's a question of whether the bill can even get to the floor though. I believe there are enough HFC members on the rules committee to block it, unless the Dems there vote for it. And if their votes become necessary they may demand negotiations to make the bill more palatable to the House Dems. Which there isn't really time for.

This is a very weird one. It looks nothing like the old game, as you said, and its not like the old game was some huge IP that will help boost sales by getting slapped on something new. Probably no one under age 35 has even heard of it, and even among those old enough it was not an enormous seller. All just feels very odd.

Yesterday I moved everything I had in the stock market to cash in preparation for a debt ceiling-related crash. Fortunately, the tax implications of that will be pretty minor for me. If I'm wrong, I'll sheepishly buy some new index funds in a couple weeks. And if I'm right, at least I'll be able to "buy the dip" while the economic chaos unfolds.

As I said many times last year, Democrats should've at least tried to fix this issue while they had the House. They could've put up a reconciliation bill in the lame duck to just raise/eliminate the debt ceiling and at least force Manchin/Sinema to vote against it on the floor. Instead, they did literally nothing and now here we are. It was literally the most predictable thing imaginable.