Martell Spy

But he's certainly no Boehner and that is pretty pathetic. At best you could call him a pretty limp Boehner.

His spokesman is saying it was inadvertent.

Bob Menendez’s prosecutors are already grappling with some tough Supreme Court precedents In a string of recent decisions, the justices have made it more difficult to prosecute public officials for corruption. https://www.politico.com/news/2023/09/30/menendez-indictment-supreme-court-00119244

No, it's more complicated than that, but they could have just laid down and voted to turn America into a personal piggie bank for the Trump family. Certainly at that point the DOJ had laid down on the job and no one else was going to stop it. Obviously, right-wing primaries are a problem.

The American public voted Trump out.

California’s fast-food workers win fight for $20 hourly pay and industry council A new legislation will create a panel that will set wages and other standards for the industry https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/sep/28/california-fast-food-workers-minimum-wages-victory

No idea, but the 2 force users keep getting called mercenaries. Which implies they are getting paid. Paid what is the question. I imagine it's not just credits and that it goes to Skoll, not the apprentice. I prefer to hope that he's going to build a restort world out there and invite his true love, Lucius Vorenus.

Supreme Court rejects Alabama’s attempt to avoid creating a second Black majority congressional district https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/26/politics/supreme-court-alabama-redistricting/index.html

Blame the US supreme court for the Bob Menendez scandal https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/sep/25/menendez-scandal-supreme-court-corruption

US prison labor is cruel and pointless legalized slavery. I know first-hand Dyjuan Tatro I was paid 10 cents an hour to do menial work that taught no skills or life lessons. Without a college-in-prison degree, I’d probably be back in prison today https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/sep/22/us-prison-labor-is-cruel-and-pointless-legalized-slavery-i-know-first-hand

Hopefully he enjoyed riding that Trump tiger. Now he goes off into disgrace smelling of tiger piss.

Dragon Warrior (Dragon Quest) and Final Fantasy 1 were also major turn-based RPG releases around that time period. Much as I loved them, I do think it's good thing games have evolved past the old type of random encounters. It could be pretty frustrating to have half a dozen random encounters happen as you try to cross a stretch of overland forest, each with a loading screen. You knew what you were getting into though when you played these games. Almost all of Wizardry's gameplay is random encounters.

Fetterman blasts Boebert: ‘If I take up vaping ... they’ll make me a folk hero’ “If I take up vaping and grabbing the hog during a live musical, they’ll make me a folk hero,” Fetterman wrote. https://www.politico.com/news/2023/09/19/lauren-boebert-fetterman-00116734

If all boats will be lifted, why stifle it with regulation? The increased prosperity will cancel out ill effects.

Yeah, Wizardy was huge to me. I assume it was huge to 1980's computer people, too. But I couldn't get a PC until adulthood, but I found a NES copy of Wizardry. There weren't a lot of NES turn-based RPGs. But also playing Wizardy was like playing D&D, and this was before I got to play that so it was a good stand in. I couldn't find a copy to buy, but rented it often from a video store.

Required, but not assured or certain to happen. The cure for regulation is regulatory capture. The cure for democracy is to either subvert it or get rid of it entirely.

I had a tech job where the expectation was about 2 hours or work a day, but 8 hours of clock time. Actually, I think you could get yourself fired if you really made a problem for the bosses by finishing your weekly quota in 10 hours and pestering them for more. We played pool a lot, there was a table in the cafe. And I personally enjoyed the work, there just wasn't a business need for more to be done. Authority is the difference between a worker and a manager not working and/or goofing off. And that's what makes the whole Musk working 100 hours thing so ridiculous. He could be wanking off in the closets 98 of those hours. He owns all the closets and can forbid anyone from entering. He enjoys torturing workers and counts this activity as part of these self-reported working hours.

Got Starship Design and it was definitely worth it. Got access to better engines. Replaced the old hab with a bigger one, added another hab with armory. Then to complete the design I had to upgrade the grav drive and add 2 more engines. Also upgraded a gun. Cost about 50 k, but was worth it. It was confusing at first, but now that I ripped a ship apart I think I see how to create a whole new ship. It's going to cost a lot of money, but I think it's actually cheaper than buying whole new ships. And there's a lot of customization options I haven't even gotten into yet. Like designing the ship to support a huge crew. I've been mainly focusing on more cargo space right now. Got another rank in Starship Design as I like what I see here.

Yes, there's a bribery skill, I think it's Negotiation. I can see it on the skill tree, it's a 2nd tier skill. Actually, it's the only other social skill I know of that has an effect on conversations. (Others like intimidation and diplomacy might, I just have no experience with them) At least in the skill tree a lot of the social skills seem to do stuff like make NPCs run, or fight for you, etc. (manipulation and intimidation as examples) I still have zero social skills. Probably need to fix that. I've been able to get by with wines, drugs, and fancy suits. I was actually relieved though to run into an NPC I couldn't persuade. (And sometimes they just don't give you an option, I ran into a couple powerful NPCs like that)

Football coach who won Supreme Court case for right to pray on the field resigns after one game https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/06/us/washington-football-coach-pray-resigns/index.html

Court throws out Alabama GOP congressional map for violating Voting Rights Act An independent court-appointed expert will now draw Alabama’s congressional map for the 2024 election. https://www.politico.com/news/2023/09/05/court-throws-out-alabama-gop-congressional-map-for-violating-voting-rights-act-00113962

Judge says DeSantis’ congressional map is unconstitutional, orders lawmakers to draw new one The ruling is a rebuke of the governor’s map that broke up a North Florida district. https://www.politico.com/news/2023/09/02/judge-says-desantis-congressional-map-is-unconstitutional-orders-lawmakers-to-draw-new-one-00113835

‘Astonishingly cruel’: Alabama seeks to test execution method on death row ‘guinea pig’ Nine months after Kenneth Smith’s botched lethal injection, state attorney general has asked for approval to kill him with nitrogen theguardian.com/world/2023/sep/02/alabama-execution-nitrogen-kenneth-smith

He was an old man and now divorced. So yes, there was changes.

Edited to add so I'm not putting out misinformation: It launched last night if you paid for the Premium edition. Played a few hours of Starfield. It launched last night at 5 pm here in Pacific time. Looks solid. Zero crashes or even visual bugs. It seems like they may have even accounted for caught behind object errors as the robot Vasco got in my way once and I was backed in a corner, then there was a slight movement from the robot and I was out. Ground combat is very crisp, really looking forward to getting into the jet packs and stuff later. Space dog fights are a lot of fun. My main advice would be to remember you have a thruster. Forgot that a while and it made things difficult, but it's night and day using them. Playing a Long Hauler so I have ship skills. The early space combats became easy once I figured that out, with me getting on their tails and destroying them pretty easy. I haven't seen much of the game yet, I'm in the early stages searching for the pirate captain at the research base. My general sense though is the writing is at a pretty high level. Found lots of books with interesting lore and tidbits in them in the base, reminds me of Morrowind in that sense. I've met only one major character so far, Barrett, but I was very impressed. Just a really cool guy. Someone my character would actually want to work with. Better than most of Fallout 4 characters. I'm annoyed I can't make many choices on what to do yet, but that's typical Bathesda. The early mission annoyed, but it was kind of genius as it was very short. And they immediately offer you a way out. I wondered if it would be very railroadish when you join Constellation, but it makes total sense for 99 percent of characters, even surly ones. Here's a way out of being a miner wage slave, and by the way we are loaning you a ship. Great looting in the base, great items in general. One of my favorite things to do on Bathesda games. Love the scanning mechanic. You can scan flora, alien animals, and mineral deposits. Also I really like that you can apparently later sell this knowledge, but I'm not somewhere I can do that yet. Can't wait to design and modify my own ships. Also to see the big cities. Plus, smuggling and piracy, but I'll have to make another character for that, as it's outside this character's moral bounds. I usually make 1 character for a Bathesda game for a long time so I can really get into it, but I am probably going to end up making four or five relatively fast this time. At a minimum I want to do a crook and a scientist, probably eventually a diplomat. Skill tree looks great. It was a lot of fun to go through it all once I got a chance.